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NetBackup™ NAS Administrator's Guide

Last Published: 2025-08-12

Product(s): NetBackup (11.0.0.1)

Wildcard characters in backup selections for an NDMP policy

You can use wildcard characters in regular expressions or the directive ALL_FILESYSTEMS to specify path names in NDMP policy backup selections.

Wildcard characters in regular expressions or directives are valid for streaming and non-streaming NDMP backups.

Note:

Directory-level expansion is not supported for some NDMP servers. Some NDMP filer vendors do not have the APIs that NetBackup uses to support wildcard characters lower than the volume level.

If you specify a backup selection using wildcard characters lower than the volume level for these filers, status code 106 is generated. The following message is displayed: Invalid file pathname found, cannot process request.

Currently, only NetApp filers support wildcard characters for backup selections lower than the volume level. This support is not available in NetApp clustered Data ONTAP version 8.2.

To see the versions of NetApp Data ONTAP that support wildcard characters for backup selections lower than the volume level, refer to the NetBackup Compatibility List for all Versions.

You cannot use any wildcard characters that also match file names. For example, a backup selection might include /vol/vol_archive_01/autoit*. This specification might match a path name such as /vol/vol_archive_01/autoit_01/. However, if this specification also matches a file name like /vol/vol_archive_01/autoit-v1-setup.exe, the backup job fails with status code 99 because wildcards can specify only path names. The following message is displayed: NDMP backup failure (99).

Table: Valid wildcard characters for NDMP policy backup selections

Wildcard character	Description
*	Specifies a string match. For example: /vol/vol_archive_* This form of the path specification matches all paths that begin with the literal characters /vol/vol_archive_ and end with any characters. The string match wildcard can also specify multiple variable characters between literal characters as in the following examples: */vol/ora_archive** or /vol/ora_archive */vol/ora_vol/qtree_archive** or /vol/ora_vol/qtree_archive
?	Specifies a single-character match. /fs? This path specification matches all paths that begin with the literal characters /fs and end with any single character. For example, /fs1,/fs3, /fsa, /fsd and so on match the specified pattern /fs?.
[...]	Specifies an alphanumeric pattern match. For example: /fs[1-9] This path specification matches all paths that begin with the literal characters /fs and end with any single numeric character from 1 through 9. For example, /fs1,/fs2, and so on up to /fs9 match the specified pattern /fs[1-9]. However, /fs0 and /fsa do not match the specified pattern; 0 is out of the specified numeric range, and a is a non-numeric character. The pattern match wildcard can also specify alphanumeric patterns such as /fs[1-5a]. This specification matches /fs1, /fs2, and so on up to /fs5 as well as /fsa. Similarly, the pattern match wildcard can also specify patterns like /fs[a-p4]. This specification matches /fsa, /fsb, and so on up to /fsp as well as /fs4. You must use multiple backup selection specifications if the pattern can match more than 10 volume names in a numeric series. For example, you may want to back up 110 volumes that begin with the literal characters /vol/ndmp and are numbered 1 through 110. To include these volumes in a backup selection with wildcards, specify three backup selections with the following wildcard patterns: /vol/ndmp[0-9] This pattern matches any volume name that begins with /vol/ndmp and ends with a single numeric character 0 through 9. /vol/ndmp[0-9][0-9] This pattern matches any volume name that begins with /vol/ndmp and ends with the two-digit numeric characters 00 through 99. /vol/ndmp[0-9][0-9][0-9] This pattern matches any volume name that begins with /vol/ndmp and ends with the three-digit numeric characters 000 through 999. Do not specify /vol/ndmp[1-110] in this example. This pattern produces inconsistent results.
{...}	Curly brackets can be used in the backup selection list and the VOLUME_EXCLUDE_LIST directive for NDMP policies. A pair of curly brackets (or braces) indicates multiple volume or directory name patterns. Separate the patterns by commas only; no spaces are permitted. A match is made for any or all entries. For example: `{volA,volB}` or `{volA,volB}`

Note the following restrictions and behaviors regarding wildcard expressions:

It is not recommended that you use a single forward-slash character (/) in an NDMP policy backup selection. This method of including all the volumes on an NDMP filer in the selection is not supported. Instead, use the ALL_FILESYSTEMS directive:
See ALL_FILESYSTEMS and VOLUME_EXCLUDE_LIST directives.
Nested wildcard expressions can result in recursive path name expansion operations that can impact performance, especially for directories that have a very large number of files or directories. An example of nested wildcard expansion is as follows:
/vol/fome06/*/*private
Wildcard expressions do not span or include a path separator (/).
All backup selections that contain a wildcard expression must start with a path separator (/). An example of a correct wildcard expression is as follows:
/vol/archive_*
An example of an incorrect wildcard expression is as follows:
vol/archive_*