How to Exclude Files from Backups

whmadvanced backups

Valid for versions 82 through the latest version

Version:

82

Last modified: April 17, 2023

Overview

To exclude files or directories from your user backups, perform either of the following actions:

Exclude the files from all users’ backups
Exclude the files from an individual user’s backups.

The global and local exclude files apply to the account backups that you manage in WHM’s Backup section (WHM » Home » Backup) and the Download a Full Website Backup feature in cPanel’s Backup interface (cPanel » Home » Files » Backup).

Note:

If you initiate a Home Directory backup in cPanel’s Backup interface (cPanel » Home » Files » Backup), the global and local exclude files do not affect the contents of the backup file.
If you perform a backup with the /scripts/pkgacct script, the global and local exclude files do not affect the contents of the backup file.
The backup-exclude.conf files only apply to files or directories in a user’s home directory. They do not apply to files or directories outside of a user’s home directory.

Global exclude file

To exclude files or directories from your backups for all user accounts, add those files or directories to the /etc/cpbackup-exclude.conf file. The /etc/cpbackup-exclude.conf file excludes the files that you specify relative to any location from which the backup script runs.

The backup system excludes the following files and directories for all users’ backups by default:

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*/.wysiwygPro_*
*/core.[0-9]
.MirrorSearch
.cpan
.cpanel/caches
.cpanel/datastore
.cpcpan
.sqmailattach
access-logs
public_ftp/.ftpquota

Local exclude file

To exclude files or directories from an individual user’s backups, add the desired paths (relative to the user’s home directory) to the cpbackup-exclude.conf file in the user’s home directory, with one entry per line.

If the file does not already exist, you must create it. To do this, run the following command:

touch /home/username/cpbackup-exclude.conf

Note:

In this example, username represents the name of the user who owns the files or directories.
If you enter a directory name, the backup system excludes all of the files that exist in the directory.
When you specify files, do not include leading or trailing characters of any kind, such as slashes (/) or periods (.).

Example

For example, to exclude the /home/username/example/ directory and the /home/username/dir/example.php file from the username user’s backups, create the following /home/username/cpbackup-exclude.conf file:

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example
dir/example.php