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I'm using backintime to create versioned backups of my root partition, and I would ideally like it to be making these snapshots quite often, daily if possible. However each snapshot at the moment is over 500MB after only a day of no actual activity! I'm used to OSX's Time Machine, which is quite smart and I rarely need to worry about space filling up.

My questions are:

  1. Are there any "common sense" directories/files that I should exclude from the backup path that aren't included in the default exclusion list? I've already added the databases from my Plex server, as well as /var/lib/mlocate/mlocate.db and a few other hotspots I found by analyzing the differences between snapshot directories.

  2. Is there a way to make backintime make room for new snapshots by just deleting the oldest? I know that the smart_remove feature has good aspects, but will the drive still run out of space if smart_remove is enabled? In other words, is age the only factor that will make backintime's smart_remove get rid of a snapshot, or will lack of space also cause a deletion?

Default exclusion list:

profile1.snapshots.exclude.1.value=.gvfs
profile1.snapshots.exclude.10.value=/proc/*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.11.value=/sys/*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.12.value=/dev/*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.13.value=/run/*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.14.value=/media/*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.15.value=*tmp/*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.16.value=*.log*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.2.value=.cache*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.3.value=[Cc]ache*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.4.value=.thumbnails*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.5.value=[Tt]rash*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.6.value=*.backup*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.7.value=*~
profile1.snapshots.exclude.8.value=/mnt/*
profile1.snapshots.exclude.9.value=.dropbox*
sgbrown
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    This is a bit late but: are you sure the snapshots are actually taking up that space? BIT works by making hard links to older files (ie, new pointers are existing files), which file managers sometimes mistake as two separate files, incorrectly counting the space they take twice. I suggest you check your disk's usage before and after a backup to see if it actually changes as much as you thought. – FrontierPsycho Mar 28 '21 at 12:30

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