Global Excludes

Global exclude patterns define paths and files that are excluded from all backup schedules by default. Manage them from the Excludes page under Settings in the sidebar.

How Global Excludes Work

When a backup runs, the agent passes exclude patterns to borg create --exclude. Global excludes apply to every schedule on every host unless a schedule explicitly opts out by enabling Ignore global excludes in its configuration.

This means you can define patterns once (e.g., cache directories, temporary files, build artifacts) and have them apply fleet-wide without duplicating them on every schedule.

Managing Patterns

The Excludes page presents a plain-text editor — one pattern per line. Add, remove, or reorder patterns, then click Save.

Patterns are evaluated in order. Borg checks each file path against the pattern list and skips the first match.

Pattern Syntax

Assimilate passes patterns directly to borg. The following prefixes control matching behaviour:

Shell Patterns (default)

Patterns without a prefix use shell-style globbing:

Pattern	Effect
*.cache	Any file ending in .cache
home/*/Downloads	Downloads directory in any home dir
*.{jpg,png}	Multiple extensions

Path Prefix (pp:)

Matches any path component by name:

Pattern	Effect
pp:__pycache__	Any directory named __pycache__ at any depth
pp:/proc	Exact path prefix /proc

Regex (re:)

Full regular expression matching against the entire path:

Pattern	Effect
re:\.git/objects/	Git object directories anywhere
re:/tmp/[^/]+\.sock$	Socket files in /tmp

Fnmatch (fm:)

Case-sensitive fnmatch pattern:

Pattern	Effect
fm:*.log	Any file ending in .log

For the full pattern syntax reference, see the BorgBackup documentation.

Per-Schedule Override

Individual schedules can override global excludes in two ways:

1. Add schedule-specific patterns — these are merged with global excludes.
2. Ignore global excludes — check this option in the schedule configuration to use only the schedule's own patterns.
3. Add include patterns — rescue specific paths from any of the excludes above instead of adding to them. See Include Patterns.

See Scheduling for per-schedule exclude configuration.

Recommended Patterns

A reasonable starting set for Linux systems:

pp:__pycache__
pp:.cache
pp:node_modules
pp:.tmp
re:\.git/objects/
*.pyc
*.swp
*~
/dev
/proc
/sys
/run
/tmp

Adjust based on the workloads running on your backup machines. Avoid overly broad patterns that might exclude important data.

API Endpoints

Global excludes are stored as a single newline-separated block of patterns and edited as a whole, not as individually addressable records.

Method	Path	Description
GET	/api/excludes	Get the global exclude patterns as raw text
PUT	/api/excludes	Replace the global exclude patterns from raw text

See the full API Reference for request/response schemas.