Is it possible to exclude address lists from an export?
We have some very large address lists - some dynamic and some curated that contain information that may only be valid for a brief period of time. It is likely that new lists will be available as soon as any restore operation is complete. The address lists are a significant portion of the configuration export.
Any ideas are appreciated!
Dynamic entries in lists don’t get exported. So if you can make all (most?) list entries dynamic, it won’t bloat configuration exports.
Sorry, but what’s the problem to have it on export?
You can edit export files, just like any text files. Before importing, remove the stuff you don’t want to be imported.
I should have been more clear about this, The exports with the lists are huge, often too big to be sent by email (using a script on the device that takes an export and emails it for backup). The issue is not the size on import, the issue is that (due to their size) it is difficult to get the exports from the device to a safe place.
Large GEOIP lists, IP lists for security, etc. All of these could be recreated and imported if the device needed to be restored, but it's probably not worth the wear and tear to 1. Delete them, 2. Perform the Export 3. Reimport the lists
It would be great to have things like GEOIP or any of the available lists based on abuse as a separate service (without each entry being part of the config), but that seems like too much to ask.
As alrady wroten from other user, simply import it as dynamic, and we never be on export.
I have been writing on a export and restore script for address-lists. It reduces the number of characters you need to backup/restore such a list.
I think that it is able to convert to static but I don’t think it I already made it convert to dynamic. But that could be implemented. It is still beta and I did not spend much time on it more than a year now.
I made it it for the same reason to have smaller exports/backup. But then I am thinking why is that not a option on backup/restore or export/import to ignore address-lists. It chould be choice of the user to not export/import those lists.
Edit: checking my script I can make them dynamic but only with a time-out, RouterOS limitation on script/terminal, and then the max timeout is 35 weeks 3 days and 13 hours 13 minutes and 56 seconds. I can make that time as MAXimum when selecting restore as dynamic with a warning that the it will expire in time. This is implemented only for backup for making it easy to generate different address-list for different ‘client’ routers.
The help test:
:gone
Edit 2: the name of the address-list can not contain spaces or special control characters used in RouterOS.
Why address-list shiud be choised and anoter part not?
I do not want export bridges when do export.
Should be user choice…
Address lists are very "bulky" -- at lest that's my reasoning. I'd be equally happy with a real GEOIP service that is part of the "system" rather than part of the config, but I asked for that 10+ years ago and it's unlikely to happen. I'd be thrilled if my config could just say "block * from the country of Monaco on Sunday" by reference without having to build and maintain my own list of all IPs of Monaco.