[rdiff-backup-users] New user, some simple questions

[Daryl Styrk]

I have recently started using rdiff-backup to backup /home from my
laptop to an external drive.  I am trying to get a better idea of what
exactly is going on.  After reading over the man page and looking over a 
few examples I still have some questions.

I currently have a simple script to run

rdiff-backup --exclude /home/daryl/Downloads/ /home/daryl/ 
/media/Lacie/daryl_backup

However testing --exclude by dropping test.txt in ~/Downloads shows that 
the directory is still being copied over.  Is this because the first 
time I ran rdiff to the target I did not include --exclude in my script?

Another test I tried was putting text1.txt in ~/ and running the script. 
 After verifying that it made it to the target 
/media/Lacie/daryl_backup I then removed it from ~/ and ran the script 
again.  Looking again at the target I found that it had been removed. It 
was my understanding that it should have stayed there until I removed it 
with --remove-older-than .  What happens here?

rdiff-backup 1.2.5 from Debian Lenny.

Enlightenment or some pointers at what I should be reading would be 
appreciated.

My overall goal is to keep a daily backup of /home while controlling 
either by hand or automagically how big the destination grows, be it a 
month, year or whatever. If that seems impractical I'm open to suggestions.

Please CC me as I'm not subscribed to this list.

Daryl