Allow excluding directories from Borg backup

[Gchbg]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

My AIO instance has limited storage. When my files are backed up locally by the borg system, my effective storage is halved. Some of my data can be regenerated if lost, or is otherwise not critical, and I would like to exlude it from backup.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would love to have an easy way to exclude certain directories from all backups. This can be easily achieved by adding two command-line options to the borg create invocation in the aio-borgbackup container: --exclude-if-present=.noaiobackup --keep-exclude-tags. This will exclude any directory which contains a file called .noaiobackup within it.

In this way, I can exclude directories with non-critical data from my backups, reducing the storage requirement for my local backup, and making more of my limited storage available for actual data.

I've been using this solution on a locally modified AIO instance without issues.

Additional context

This change is trivial and completely backward-compatible. People who do not have .noaiobackup files will not experience any difference.

[szaimen]

Hi, interesting idea! Just to make it clear directly, I will not work on this but would accept a PR that adds this feature.

Please make sure that the restore with rsync also respects these files then so that it will not delete all the folders that contain these files when you try to do a restore from the AIO interface.

[szaimen]

This will be done in #6009

[szaimen]

This is now released with v10.6.0 Beta. Testing and feedback is welcome! See https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one#how-to-switch-the-channel

[Iakhou69]

Hi, so now we just need to add this file : .noaiobackup and that's all ? Or we need to add this on borg container ? --exclude-if-present=.noaiobackup --keep-exclude-tags

[szaimen]

See https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one?tab=readme-ov-file#how-to-exclude-nextclouds-data-directory-or-the-preview-folder-from-backup

[Asuranceturix]

Is it possible to exclude arbitrary folders from backup? We have a group folder that is used to temporarily exchange files between users, and it makes no sense to include it in the backup. I have created a .noaiobackup file inside that folder, but Borg does include it in the backup.

[szaimen]

Indeed this is currently not possible. See what is possible: https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one?tab=readme-ov-file#how-to-exclude-nextclouds-data-directory-or-the-preview-folder-from-backup

[Asuranceturix]

Well, too bad, it would be nice to have but I guess it's kind of a corner use case. Anyhow, thanks for your extremely prompt reply and for your work on the project. :)