Custom Script question

[memphismonkey]

I have a custom script built in SuperDuper to do clones of the boot drive but I don't want to include things like the contents of the Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Movies etc. I do however want to have the folder itself and the permissions etc. saved so that if and when I need to restore the system to another hard drive or whatever I won't need to go back and add those manually. Since they are created by the system when you create a new account they can be a little tricky.

What I'm unsure of is the proper formatting for the Ignore script. Should it be as follows?

/Users/username/Movies/*

If this isn't possible I'm wondering if anyone else has a manageable process to re-add user folders back with proper permissions after a restore.

Thanks
MM

[memphismonkey]

In the Public user folder I do want to also make sure I restore the Drop Box but again with no contents that might have been in it.

[dnanian]

Yes, that's what you'll do - ignore Folder/* and Folder/.* (the latter being hidden files), but not Folder.

[memphismonkey]

So one little wrinkle in my plan which I don't think there is an answer for. Users sometimes drop folders and files into the root of their user folder. If I were to put /Users/username/* then all the folder I just copied without contents get excluded as well right? Can I manipulate this by putting that exclude at the top of the list and then doing includes for the folders in question instead?

[dnanian]

Let's step back. In general, I really, strongly, sincerely discourage this kind of thing. Disk space is cheap, MM, and having another copy of these files is worth the small expense for the space...

[memphismonkey]

It's not disk space really that I'm all that worried about. This is for a very small office type of thing where I'm maintaining a couple desktops for art production. All the systems have one standard user that is used for day to day artist work and one Admin user for me. Before I do any software or system updates I always run Super Duper to update my cloned boot. That way in case it goes horribly wrong I can get back to a working system quickly and trouble shoot later. In additon to this script I also run one that clones everything to another drive. I just want this quick smart update clone script for those software update types of scenarios. I know you've got the Sandbox concept but when I first started doing it this way it worked fine. Maybe I will go back and re-read that use case and consider testing it out.

[dnanian]

OK. Well, anyway, yes - if you ignore an entire directory (eg /Users/*/*) and then include some folders (eg /Users/*/Documents), you'll copy Documents but no others below /Users/*/*...