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command line option to use a different config file than timeshift.json #336
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I have a huge home folder.
For managing different situations at the moment I start timeshift-gtk and change manually destination or filters to switch between pure backups for linux and backups that include (non-hidden) config files (some blender addons), personal data and virtualbox windows images.
This is tedious and I tend to either
miss backuping up some data or
I run the danger of deleting personal data with restoring linux from a snapshot
On the command line there is already the --target-device option which is very useful but there is no way to filter the files. This could only be done by modifying (and later restoring) /etc/timeshift/timeshift.json. For me modifying the existing timeshfit.json is too dangerous as too much could go wrong.
Describe the solution you'd like
I would like to have an option for the command line to select a config file other than the default timeshift.json. With this I could add a line to the existing /etc/cron.d/timeshift-hourly so that cron can take care of different backup strategies. It should be obvious that this second backup must have a separate target device.
Alternatively a command line option to exclude files (as rsync does) would be helpful in combination with the --target-device option.
This possible future /etc/cron.d/timeshift-hourly would be my prefered solution:
Describe alternatives you've considered
At the moment I use rsync in cron for personal data, but I'm not good at scripting, just one line in cron. So I only have one local backup of important personal files. I can't go back to a specific point in time to look up changes I made to some files. Once in a while I create manually other snapshots.
In addition I use lsyncd to mirror the complete timeshift mountpoint to a remote location (Yes, I know, this is likely to miss files, I would not restore the operation system, only personal data from this).
Activity
github-actions commentedon Sep 27, 2026
This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had
any activity in over 2 years.
If this issue is still relevant:
If no activity occurs in the next 30 days, this issue will be
automatically closed. Issues can be reopened if needed.
ygerlach commentedon Sep 27, 2026
I think someone started to implement this in #412
tusch001 commentedon Sep 27, 2026
I am looking forward to this. Will close issue with release.