Mixing include and exclude patterns in tarsnap.conf

[Bob Williams <linux@barrowhillfarm.org.uk>]

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I want to back up the whole of my /home/user directory, excluding a
selection of subfolders, but *including* a few config files in /etc.

My tarsnap.conf file looks like this:

### User specific options for tarsnap
### These options override any set in
### /usr/local/etc/tarsnap.conf

# Tarsnap cache directory
cachedir /home/bob/../tarsnap/tarsnap-cache

keyfile /home/bob/../tarsnap.key

# Exclude files and directories matching specified patterns
exclude /home/bob/AlbumBrowser
exclude /home/bob/Channel 23 Ltd
exclude /home/bob/DaveTemp
exclude /home/bob/DaveTransfer
exclude /home/bob/DaveVideo
exclude /home/bob/Documents/pgp
[...]

# Include only files and directories matching specified patterns
include /etc/crontab
include /etc/fstab
include /etc/HOSTNAME
include /etc/hosts
include /etc/mdadm.conf
include /etc/mpd.conf
include /etc/sudoers
include /etc/vimrc
include /etc/ssh

The command I'm using is:

sudo tarsnap --dry-run --print-stats -v -c -f bhf-bob-`date
+\%Y-\%m-\%d` /home/bob /etc

but the output is just the --print-stats stuff:

bob@barrowhillfarm:~> sudo tarsnap --dry-run --print-stats -v -c -f
bhf-bob-`date +\%Y-\%m-\%d` /home/bob /etc
                                       Total size  Compressed size
All archives                          40334809966      38211678307
  (unique data)                       39263792675      37158355424
This archive                                 1489             1356
New data                                     1489             1356

If I remove all those include directives, then it runs as I expect,
lots of lines beginning with 'a', and apparently backing up all the
non-excluded stuff in /home/bob (which is what I want) and the whole
of /etc (which I don't want). I could add exclude lines for everything
in /etc *except* those include lines above, but that seems
inefficient, and begs the question "what are the include patterns for?"

Could someone help me get my head around this, please?

Bob
- -- 
Bob Williams
System:  Linux 3.11.10-11-desktop
Distro:  openSUSE 13.1 (x86_64) with KDE Development Platform: 4.13.2
Uptime:  06:00am up 13 days 11:36, 3 users, load average: 0.07, 0.06, 0.05
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