More often than not, we UNIX Administrators like our OS and data files have a good and trusted backup of all our files. But let us accept it there are really files or filesystems that really do not need to be backed up and they would just take up some space on our very expensive tapes (and of course backup time).

Here is my generic exclude_list that you can place under /usr/openv/netbackup folder. Just create a flat file and viola! You just created your own exclude_list which will be read by Netbackup once it started its queue.

/dev/fd
/mnt
/xfn
/net
/proc
/tmp
/usr/tmp
/var/tmp
/cdrom
/etc/mnttab
lost+found/
/var/tmp/flash
/cdsource/*
# Oracle stuff - as this must be backed up by rman
/ora/fs*/u*
/ora/fs*/r*
/ora/fs*/oraarch

With this you will save some time that is usually taken by the non-critical files or filesystem.

See you on my next note!!!