Cannot restore from backup- can someone help a newb?

Support
#1

Hello
I just set up an unraid NAS, moved over from Synology. I have Duplicacy up and running. This afternoon I severely messed up my immich install, and need to restore my nas to its previous state. When I try to restore the appdata from duplicicay, it fails with the following message:

The restore command encountered an error:
Failed to change uid or gid: lchown /userdata/appdata/Backups/Bills PC/Bills PC2025-10-25T090617.vbk: operation not permitted

Exit code: 100

Here is the log:

2025-11-14 17:19:44.500 INFO REPOSITORY_SET Repository set to /userdata/appdata
2025-11-14 17:19:44.500 INFO STORAGE_SET Storage set to sftp://william@100.70.227.23/Unraid
2025-11-14 17:19:44.677 INFO SNAPSHOT_FILTER Loaded 0 include/exclude pattern(s)
2025-11-14 17:19:44.685 INFO RESTORE_INPLACE Forcing in-place mode with a non-default preference path
2025-11-14 17:19:44.685 INFO RESTORE_INDEXING Indexing /userdata/appdata
2025-11-14 17:19:44.685 INFO SNAPSHOT_FILTER Parsing filter file /cache/localhost/restore/.duplicacy/filters
2025-11-14 17:19:44.686 INFO SNAPSHOT_FILTER Loaded 0 include/exclude pattern(s)
2025-11-14 17:19:54.287 WARN LIST_FAILURE Failed to list subdirectory PostgreSQL_Immich/: open /userdata/appdata/PostgreSQL_Immich: permission denied
2025-11-14 17:21:04.623 WARN LIST_FAILURE Failed to list subdirectory postgresql_immich/: open /userdata/appdata/postgresql_immich: permission denied
2025-11-14 17:21:04.624 INFO RESTORE_START Restoring /userdata/appdata to revision 17
2025-11-14 17:21:05.048 ERROR RESTORE_CHOWN Failed to change uid or gid: lchown /userdata/appdata/Backups/Bills PC/Bills PC2025-10-25T090617.vbk: operation not permitted

I am totally at a loss- have never used a command line, so I have been trying to do this only using the GUI.
Can someone have mercy on a total
newb and help me get this fixed?

#2

How are you using duplicacy?

  • User that runs duplicacy may not have permission to write to the locations you are trying to restore to
  • The location may be mounted read-only
  • The database may still be running

This looks like the permission issue. Check that the duplicacy user has access to relevant locations

By the way, backing up running databases is a bad idea. Unless you stop the service using the database for the duration of the backup, the state woudl not be consistent. The correct way to do it is to exclude database from teh backup, and instead use database vendor tools to export data, and then backup that export.