Multiple Paths to backup - failed when path not found

[Rohan_Beckett]

Just started to use urbackup last week - so far, I’m very impressed!

I currently have a fleet of laptops I’m trialling it on. Some are a based on an older standard that we used to have, that had D:\Users as the main userprofile location. 70% of the fleet are on the newer standard, where we only have a single partition

I attempted to put C:\Users; D:\Users, to catch both locations, but I’m finding clients fail to start their backup if the D: Drive doesn’t exist

Is this possible?

[john3354]

I wonder if $USERPROFILE$ would work for your case?

[Rohan_Beckett]

does that work in the config?

I’m actually more surprised that it doesn’t just fail gracefully, if a path isn’t found…

instead, it aborts the whole backup!

[uroni]

You can make it not fail if the directory does not exist. See https://www.urbackup.org/administration_manual.html#x1-640008.3.4 .

Perhaps C:\Documents and Settings points to the correct path respectively. If yes, I guess you could configure it to backup that.

[Rohan_Beckett]

Oh great! thanks for that - optional will do just nicely!

Slowly working through all the options, and documentation!

[Rohan_Beckett]

ok… so I think I must have the syntax incorrect…

I added this to the settings:
C:\Users;D:\Users/follow_symlinks,symlinks_optional,share_hashes,optional

and now all clients have this:

Cannot get volume for path “D:\Users/follow_symlinks,symlinks_optional,share_hashes,optional”. The system cannot find the file specified. (code: 2)

reading the documentation, and examples, it LOOKS correct…

[orogor]

i think you need a backup name and the separator is a pipe | no slash /

maybe look at

Missing backup path

You don’t have to add it to every path. Let’s say it was just D:\Client Data\Pat Pritchard. If they somehow never moved their files from that path, all you would have to do is add in D:\Client Data\Pat Pritchard|Pat Pritchard/optional Or, if it was constantly moved around in Client Data, then just make it D:\Client Data|Client Data/optional I do agree that making every path optional is just horrible within itself, but just trying to give you options to make it work. Alternatively, you could…

[ttrammell]

Like what orogor said:

@orogor

i think you need a backup name and the separator is a pipe | no slash /

So instead of it being:

D:\Users/follow_symlinks,symlinks_optional,share_hashes,optional

It will be:

D:\Users|Users/follow_symlinks,symlinks_optional,share_hashes,optional

(BackupPath)|(Name)/(Options)

[Rohan_Beckett]

thanks… it looks like that works…

I guess, upon re-reading the documentation, it DOES say this… so my bad… but it could be a bit clearer…

from the previous paragraph, the | pipe and name is only needed if you want to have a nicer/friendly name for your backup paths (something I didn’t care about)…

but a little extra emphasis that if you want to use an option flag, that backup name then becomes mandatory, would be good!

urbackup is really working well here… 20 odd clients, and backups have levelled off at around 1tb… which is very nice… meaning that the auto cleanups must be working!