BackUp.ini
working with BackUp's UNIX-like preferences file..

As explained here, I like ini files.


So, get a Text Editor..

The only possible barrier to your working with BackUp's preferences is lack of a decent text editor.

You don't need anything fancy, so long as it works with plain text, and does Syntax Highlighting. Notepad would work, technically, but without syntax highlighting, it will be almost impossible to distinguish comments from actual preferences, and not only will viewing be choreful, you are quite likely to make errors.

Most modern text editors can do syntax highlighting which simply colours the text by what it is; comments are usually grey or light green. Syntax highlighting is the difference between this.. 

[BackUp]
# Text Editor
#
# This is notes, see
editor=notepad.exe

and this.. 

[BackUp]
# Text Editor
#
# This is notes, see
editor=C:\path\to\cool\editor.exe


That's it!

Most everything else you need to know is inside BackUp.ini - drop it into your text editor!

If you used BackUp's installer, you can find BackUp.ini here..

C:\Documents and Settings\<Username>\Application Data\corz\BackUp

On Vista, it's here..

C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\corz\BackUp

If you are running in portable mode, it will be sitting right next to BackUp.exe.

You can also access BackUp.ini by right-clicking BackUp's Progress ToolTip or System Tray icon.

More @tokens..

Many of BackUp's settings make use of Dynamic Tokens. As explained on BackUp's main page, tokens are special strings, preceded with an at sign ("@", aka. "commercial at"), that you can insert into your backup sets. Tokens are automagically transformed into their current value at run-time.

Inside your backup sets, you can use the following tokens in the main file backup commands..

@appdatacommon
"All User's" Application Data folder.
@appdatadir
Current user's Application Data folder.
In their home folder. Known as "AppData" on Vista.
@backupdir
Whatever you set as your backup_folder.
@desktop
Current user's desktop folder.
@homedir
Current user's home folder.
@mydocs
Current user's "My Documents" folder.
Usually, but not always inside their home folder
@programsdir
Program files folder.
Usually, though not always, "C:\Program Files".
@userdir
Program files folder.
Current user's application data folder\corz\BackUp.
@windowsdir
"WINDOWS" folder.
Usually, but not necessarily, "C:\Windows".

NOTE: the above path @tokens will alter, depending on what user runs the backup set, either by being run from inside their account, or having that user set in a scheduled task.

For the all-important name setting, you can also use many other special @tokens (if you wish, you can also use these tokens in the log_folder, dump_file, and tmp_dir settings). These tokens give you the flexibility to create all sorts of interesting backup rotation schemes, and much more. The currently available tokens, are..

@set
The real name of the current backup set.
That's the one inside the [square brackets], as used on the command-line.
@log
The location of the log file - handy for the post_run command
@now
current date in the format; @year-@mon-@mday @ @hour.@min
@today
current date in the format; @year-@mon-@mday
@sec
seconds value. from 00 to 59
@min
minutes value. from 00 to 59
@hour
hours value, in 24-hour format. from 00 to 23
@mday
numeric day of month. from 01 to 31
@mdaya
numeric day of month. from 01 to 31, plus ordinal abbreviation appendment, e.g. "21st"
@mon
numeric month. from 01 to 12
@year
four-digit year, e.g. "2008"
@wday
numeric day of week. from 1 to 7 (Sunday to Saturday).
@yday
numeric day of year. from 1 to 366 (or 365 if not a leap year)
@tmon
text version of the current month (e.g. "January")
@tsmon
short text version of the current month (e.g. "Jan")
@tday
text version of the current day (e.g. "Friday")
@tsday
short text version of the current day (e.g. "Fri")

For example, To create a fresh backup daily, retaining the previous seven backups, rotating weekly, use..

name=@set [@tday]

To create a backup, that can be synchronized every day for a month, and then archived, and a new archive begun fresh the next month, do something like..

name=[@year-@mon] @set

If you wanted a maximum of 12 such backups, rotating yearly, use..

name=[@mon] @set .. and so on.