Recommended Folders for MacOS Backups

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#1

What folders do you recommend to backup for a MacOS machine?

/Applications?
/Library?
/Users/[username]?

Rather than a backup of the whole user folder, should I break that down more? Which folders in there?

Thanks!

#2

It’s very easy.

You want to include ~, and exclude */Caches/, */Metadata/CoreSpotlight/, and ~/.Trash. This will cover most use cases.

If backing up individual user:

-*/Caches/
-*/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/
-.Trash/

If backing up all users

-*/Caches/
-*/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/
-*/.Trash/

The rest of the exclusions are handled by Time Machine exclusion attribute, which is enabled automatically if you use web ui. If you use CLI you need to turn it on manually.

There are only a handful of folders that are excluded by time machine without using the attribute. You can find them out with a simple script, but the Caches is the main one to exclude.

You can also consider skipping everything but originals in your photos library, but it’s up to you. I would not.

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#3

I kept running into errors on my user’s Library folder. So now I’m trying includes only…

#4

What kind of errors? Are you using -vss flag? Does Duplicacy_web has full disk access?

#5

I was not using -vss, but I added the option and it still failed. Full disk access WAS granted.

2024-08-20 14:26:48.228 WARN OPEN_FAILURE Failed to open file for reading: open /tmp/snp_526542549/Users/danbru1989/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.secure-control-center-preferences/Library/Preferences/group.com.apple.secure-control-center-preferences.av.plist: permission denied
2024-08-20 14:26:48.658 ERROR CHUNK_MAKER Failed to read 0 bytes: read /tmp/snp_526542549/Users/danbru1989/Library/Mobile Documents/F6266T9T75~com~apple~iMovie/Theater/Theater-backup.json: resource deadlock avoided
2024-08-20 14:26:49.463 INFO VSS_DELETE Shadow copy unmounted and deleted at /tmp/snp_526542549
2024-08-20 14:27:06.123 INFO INCOMPLETE_SAVE Incomplete snapshot saved to /Users/danbru1989/.duplicacy-web/repositories/localhost/0/.duplicacy/cache/FatFarmHQServer/incomplete_snapshot
Failed to read 0 bytes: read /tmp/snp_526542549/Users/danbru1989/Library/Mobile Documents/F6266T9T75~com~apple~iMovie/Theater/Theater-backup.json: resource deadlock avoided
#6

Some files, including group.com.apple.secure-control-center-preferences.av.plist, are owned by a supersuser. You need to run duplicacy as root but in user session.

duplicacy does not support data-less files: Support for dataless files. If you have “Optimize Mac storage” enabled, you shall exclude iCloud from backup.

#7

Ok - that makes sense. Thanks!

#8

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