Minimizing the size of backups

Since we still don’t have incremental backups, I’m wondering if there’s a way to exclude directories from the backups in VMs. E.g.:

  • /var/lib/packages in Debian
  • $HOME/.cache
  • folder with Docker images from Docker Hub
  • folders resulting from git clone commands
  • etc.

A way to do this is with “storageVMs” that connect to the corresponding VM with NFS and qvm-connect-tcp. And exclude the storageVMs from the backups. But it feels overcomplicated.

Any other way of doing this?

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You can’t exclude anything from the backup, the whole logical volume is added to the backup, it does not know anything about the content, paths etc…

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Right, that’s why the workaround is:

  • I have AppVM of which I want to exclude folder /exclude/me.
  • So I create storageVM and point /exclude/me in the AppVM to a folder in storageVM via NFS.
  • AppVM is included in the backups, while storageVM is excluded from the backups.

Definitely convoluted, but should work™.

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Another workaround is to store the data you want to back up in app qubes based on minimal templates, and avoid running programs (e.g., web browsers) in those qubes that generate large files in directories that will be backed up. Then you can just back up the minimal data qubes most of the time, which should be smaller.

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I don’t understand what the minimal template is for? The template choice / size / type has no consequences if you just backup an AppVM without its template.

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Not sure if this is still the case, but I think in the past, non-minimal templates would cause app qubes based on them to have more dot files in the user’s home directory compared to minimal templates.

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