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My Déjà Dup backups have become quiet large and I noticed they contain a huge number of unnecessary files (e.g. *.pyc files, **__pycache__ folders and other build related temporary stuff).

I know that I can ignore specific folders, but is there a way to exclude files and or folders by patterns?

I thought there might be more options usable trough a configuration file, but Déjà Dup doesn't use one. So I looked at duplicity (the CLI it is based on), but the man page doesn't mention a configuration file either. I know that duplicity can ignore files and folders based on patterns (--exclude, --exclude-filelist), but I have no idea how to combine this with Déjà Dup.

Do I have to ditch Déjà Dup and use duplicity manually? Or is there a way to set the needed options, so that they are used automatically, when duplicity is used by Déjà Dup?

You can edit the exclude list like:

gsettings get org.gnome.DejaDup exclude-list

# remove comment to execute

# gsettings set org.gnome.DejaDup exclude-list ['path1', 'path2']

Source: https://answers.launchpad.net/deja-dup/+question/280954

I tried to add patterns like '**/.git' and '**/build' into that list, like this:

gsettings get org.gnome.DejaDup exclude-list > exclude-list

gedit exclude-list

gsettings set org.gnome.DejaDup exclude-list "`cat exclude-list`"

But to me it seems like the **'s were not passed to duplicity.
So instead I ended up doing seaches like

locate "/home/*/.svn"

locate "/home/*/build"

and added them to the exclude-list manually

There is no way currently with Deja Dup to do advanced filtering like that. See upstream bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/deja-dup/+bug/374274

I tried Jacob Nordfalk's method, but it did not work for me (maybe the syntax changed).

However, I was able to change the setting using dconf-editor. You can modify the list at path /org/gnome/deja-dup/exclude-list

Sadly neither Duplicity nor Déjà Dup uses a configuration file :( But there might be a possible workaround, the user @mterry mentioned the following in the bug report linked above:

if you gconf-edit the exclude-list and add patterns like "**/parts", the pattern is passed to duplicity and everything works as expected..."

Now, where are those gconf settings stored these days?

I successfully achieve exclusion using my include_list.txt file containing:

- /home/justin/**/.insync-trash

- /home/justin/**/__pycache__

- /home/justin/**/*.pyc

- /home/justin/**/node_modules

- /home/justin/**/Google Photos

+ /home/justin/Documents

- /home/justin/*

The /**/ is important to match through to any directory depth.

Rule 1: The order is important. First be specific first and general later.

Rule 2: What has already been matched in a line (include or exclude) cannot be changed by subsequent matches in later lines. The documentation mentions this; but in terribly confusing English. Hope mine is better ;) The lines above achieve:

• Line 1: exclude any __pycache__ at any depth.


• Line 2: exlude any file with extension .pyc.


• Line 6: include my specific and only Documents folder.


• Line 7: exclude all my other home folder such as Pictures, Videos, Downloads, etc. Note that this cannot stop Documents from being included as it was already matched in Line 6! Order matters!