Done with: filtered copy (-c -X); deleted @@oldarchive’s; recrypted.
Thank you everybody!
------------
I had some remaining issues/doubts. Would appreciate some more help.
How do you all tarsnap-gui users pass the key passphrase? (For cli 'security
find-…/get-…' could be used I guess.)
tarsnap-gui adds prefix "Job_{job name}" to archives created by scheduled
backups. Is there any workaround to control this archive naming?
tarsnap-gui doesn't have a "-X/-I file" option (can include in UI though), will
the GUI then read these from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tarsnap.conf?:
include /Users/user/some dir
include //Users/user/config/settings.json
exclude /Users/user/some dir/dir1
exclude /Users/user/path/file.ext
exclude *.log
exclude .git/
tarsnap-gui has "Skip operating system junk" defaults as:
.DS_Store:.localized:.fseventsd:.Spotlight-V100:._.Trashes:.Trashes". Are these
same as putting "exclude .DS_Store", "exclude .localized"… lines in the conf
file?
I am also facing the mojibake issue after I restored a folder (non English file
names in it). While "convmv" helped (very little), can it be solved at the time
of restore/extracting? (context: Never created an archive outside of Mac
tarsnap-gui). So how to deal with this?
Cheers.
> On 27 Aug 2025, at 6:41 AM, Amarendra Kumar <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>> On 27 Aug 2025, at 5:55 AM, Colin Percival
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> If you have the latest version of tarsnap, this should have printed a warning
>> message along the lines of
>>
>> > tarsnap: List of objects to archive includes '--dry-run'. This might not
>> > be what you intended.
>
> I am using: tarsnap 1.0.41
>
>>
>> Once tarsnap sees a non-flag on the command line, everything else is treated
>> as a non-flag. So that's why this wasn't a dry run.
>
> Got it. So basically whatever tarsnap examples are there in the docs if
> there’s a flag in the example all the flags in the command should start
> right there and exhaust one by one (if I am passing more than that’s given
> in that example) and then rest of the args/fields of the commands should
> be passed after that.
>
>> That makes sense, data was copied into a new archive so it's no longer unique
>> to that archive.
>>
>>> - new-prefix_test: its list of files is much smaller than the source
>>> archive.
>>> But when I compared the file list they match exactly until new-prefix_test
>>> file ended.
>>> As you see there is no ".part" in its name.
>>> new-prefix_test 36 MB 15 MB
>>> (unique data) 205 kB 37 kB
>>
>> That's very strange. Is there anything interesting about the next file in
>> the
>> old archive after the new archive stopped? I'm wondering if somehow tarsnap
>> failed in the middle of copying the archive... if that happened you should
>> have seen an error message though.
>
> Internet disconnection definitely had happened. Also, the next file was
> just a file like it the last one copied - another .git/objects folder file.
>
> What I am wondering is why there was no .part in the name of the archive.
>
>>> Also: tarsnap-gui appends "Job_" as "Job_{job name}_{timestamp}" to every
>>> archive name. Can I choose not to add that "Job_" or decide on my own how to
>>> name the archive while still using the GUI?
>>
>> I think the GUI lets you enter your own archive names when creating a single
>> archive, yes
>
> I meant to ask if I want to schedule/automate the backup via GUI then I
> assume GUI just take the job name I have given and prefixes “Job_” to it
> and adds a timestamp suffix and creates the archive. I meant can I choose
> not to add that “Job_” to it? Might be a good GUI option really.
>
> I will try the commands again and see how it goes. Thanks.
