Configuration File

There are two configuration files for AutoArchive – system- and user-. System configuration file’s location is: “/etc/aa/aa.conf”. User configuration file’s location is by default: “~/.config/aa/aa.conf”. Options in the user file have higher priority. Note that some options can only be specified in the system file (see the list of the options below).

Structure is similar to the archive specification file – options are divided into sections. A section begins with the section name enclosed in square brackets. Sections contains variables which represents the options.

Variables are written in the option-name = value form, one variable per line. Boolean values are written as yes and no. For path values, tilde (~) is expanded to the user’s home. Form option-name = can be used to specify a variable with undefined value.

Lines beginning with # or ; are ignored and may be used for comments.

Two sections are valid: [General] and [Archive]. Both are optional although a configuration file without any section at all is considered invalid.

Section [General]

Contains configuration options for the program itself, which do not alter the backup creation.

Options valid in the [General] section:

  • verbose

  • quiet

  • archive-specs-dir

  • user-config-file

    This option can not be specified in the user configuration file.

  • user-config-dir

    This option can not be specified in the user configuration file.

See Usage for their description.

Section [Archive]

This section contains configuration options which are specific to the backup creation.

Options valid in the [Archive] section:

  • archiver

  • compression-level

  • dest-dir

  • overwrite-at-start

  • incremental

  • restarting

  • restart-after-level

  • restart-after-age

  • full-restart-after-count

  • full-restart-after-age

  • max-restart-level-size

  • remove-obsolete-backups

  • keep-old-backups

  • number-of-old-backups

  • command-before-all-backups

  • command-after-all-backups

  • command-before-backup

  • command-after-backup

  • force-archiver

  • force-incremental

  • force-restarting

  • force-compression-level

  • force-dest-dir

  • force-overwrite-at-start

See Usage for their description.