Wtf is this app, charging 20$ for some half finished web version.
No real feature updates in the year I was using this.
Even basic configuration is still missing the paid gui.
Better give the money to a real open source dev instead of some nameless company
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Welcome to the community!
Personally, I consider this as a donation to the dev for the personal CLI version, or payment for the commercial CLI version. The WebUI is a toy, that needs to be scrapped and outsourced: This free control-panel based abomination being second attempt at the GUI for duplicacy, I don’t think third attempt is justified. I said that 2 years ago (Request: Ability to sort recovery list - #14 by saspus), and I still feel the same way today.
Normally, I would disagree with such statement, and point out that lack of changes is indicative of product stability and maturily. However, with the regards to webUI – I completely agree. It’s horrible, unusable, broken in all kinds of ways, discussed here many times, and casts bad light to the CLI engine, which is rather great.
The CLI, on the other hand, is still maintained, albeit seemingly at a low priority. (The Dropbox breakage took unreasonably long to get resolved, and the interrupted prune breaking subsequent checks is still unfixed). One could say that – well, you have access to source, fix it yourself – but this is not an open source project in it’s original form – so contributing to the project for the privilege to continue paying license fee seems backwards to me. duplicacy/LICENSE.md at master · gilbertchen/duplicacy · GitHub
So, here I agree with you on both counts.
Indeed. Tried to setup filters? How about making it work on macOS in any way shape or form, to backup all users or even just user-specific mount points? Tried to restore anything? Tried to setup an FTP server connection without messing with terminal? If this is not basic – I don’t know what is.
Older relevant threads:
Relevant past threads.
This is irrelevant. Software quality does not correlate with financial arrangement, or form of LLC, source licensing, or development model. There are good open source projects, and shit commercial ones, and vice versa.
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This is irrelevant. Software quality does not correlate with financial arrangement, or form of LLC, source licensing, or development model. There are good open source projects, and shit commercial ones, and vice versa.
Agree, this was poorly worded, but I mean the closed source nature of the ui and that you are giving money to some unknown corporation where you have no idea if it even gets to the devs instead of supporting an individual directly.
Personally, I consider this as a donation to the dev for the personal CLI version
I did so too in the beginning, but it is getting completely out of hand. The UI is basically unusable, and not the slightest is being done to fix it.
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Anyway, I am looking for an alternative backup solution to backblaze b2.
If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to comment.
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Do you want GUI specifically? Because CLI duplicacy is very good, one of the best on the market. And for what OS?
Docker is just fine. I really just want a quick overview from time to time if everything is still working as expected without googling commands. Read-only gui would be fine aswell. I also need encryption.
I agree about the points related to the GUI version.
But about this:
just use the CLI version with Healthchecks or equivalent, it works perfectly and you have the best of each tool: the robustness of Duplicacy and the ease of use and look of Healthchecks
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Ok I will try cli since it integrates better with backing up databases. I can just execute a pgdump before the backup starts with the same script. Healthcheks looks pretty cool, but it adds another online service.
Why did I even start with the UI version in the first place xD
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I was just checking out Kopia while searching for an official duplicacy cli container, but the Kopia UI is so much more useable than duplicacy. I can even define scripts prior to executing backups. Any red flags on Kopia?
Looks good but is only really maintained by one guy
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Duplicacy supports pre- and post- backup scripts.
There is no other way to accomplish this task without external services: if duplicacy fails to start, or lost network, how can it report to you that it failed to backup?
Because it’s reasonable to have a working gui for a tool that you use once in your life to setup and never touch again. It’s unreasonable to expect people to read pages of documentation. And yet, here we are.
In case of duplicacy however the CLI interface is very good, clean, and mostly self-explanatory. Use that.
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TLDR that project is over engineered monster, with the sole purpose to tickle its developers egos. It suffers from featurecreep (support per file compression algorithm?!), while lacking basic necessities (support for filesystem snapshots), and the UI is written on Electron — just look at resource utilization of a simple two page UI.
Duplicacy is simple, and there lies its strength. I trust duplicacy, but I don’t trust Kopia. In addition, Kopia is still version zero, and they periodically break backwards compatibility, only maintaining one with the previous release. It’s a no go, it’s a toy project.
I’ve played with anlmosy every backup tool in existence, and earlier Kopia allowed me to corrupt its datastore, twice. I found the most resilient app is duplicacy. So, there is that. When there is a choice between nice UI and reliable backup — the latter wins.
But at first I did reject duplicacy after one look on the ui. Only after every other tool had failed to actually do backup reliably i revisited duplicacy again.
So yes, duplicacy’s UI is damaging reputation.
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Btw there is no “official” container. Likely because duplicacy does need one - it’s self contained monolithic executable with no dependencies. There are no benefits in container overheard.
Some use them as a form of a scheduler — but it’s silly. Every OS comes with a built-on scheduler already.
Most of this type of single-job software in the world is maintained by a proverbial “one guy”. Duplicacy, Arq, restic, tarsnap, rclone, borg, attic, duplicity, ….
So, you can spend time to test every single one, in various scenarios, review the past history, developer responsiveness at fixing issues over long periods of time, resilience to corruption of the tool itself, etc and make your choice, or you can ask for advice of other folks who have done it, and then research validity of their advice and aggregate it into the decision.
My conclusion so far and for the past many years was and still is as following
- FreeBSD and Linux: duplicacy CLI (CLI only, free for personal use, paid for commercial)
- macOS and Windows: Arq7 (commercial, excellent UI)
The next best thing in each category is so far behind that it’s not with considering it.
Ultimately, any of those products can cease to exist any time once 1) developer loses interest 2) product requires more support than income it generated. This is very important to consider when you pick a solution for long term backup, to mitigate risk of needing early migration.
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Huge thanks for your detailed explanation, I will avoid kopia.
Btw there is no “official” container.
I am using unraid as my main nas system and don’t intend to switch any time soon, so I need to use docker or a vm.
How does duplicati rank on your list? I have tried it today and to me it seems like a good compromise with a huge community and ok web ui for my needs.
Not necessarily. See this recent thread: How to generate ssh keys in dupkicacy web ui docker container on unraid - #6 by saspus
It’s not on my list. It used to be when I started, but now it’s beyond bottom of the list. It’s not a piece of software worthy consideration. Besides obviously lacking a stable version (why EoLs old codebase before new one is stable?) it’s absolute garbage in the one task it is designed to do — keeping your backups intact. Its database gets corrupted if you just look at it wrong, and reliance on Mono framework does not help overal reliability.
Pretend it does not exist.
The problems were very well detailed by @saspus: they are essentially unfinished software (one in zero version and the other in eternal beta). They have one huge point of failure in common: they use databases.
One of the main reasons for Duplicacy’s robustness is that it only relies on the storage filesystem.
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I don’t think Kopia uses central databases; its design is very similar to duplicacy’s: they use content addressable storage (CAS).
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My conclusion so far and for the past many years was and still is as following
- FreeBSD and Linux: duplicacy CLI (CLI only, free for personal use, paid for commercial)
- macOS and Windows: Arq7 (commercial, excellent UI)
Are there any reasons, outside of the nice GUI, to prefer Arq7 over Duplicacy CLI? (Windows user)
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I don’t want to advertise the competitor’s product here, but since this can be framed as “why did duplciacy lost customer” and ultimately help improve the product – I’ll do.
I’m macOS user but some things will still apply to windows too.
Dealbreakers (has been requested from duplicacy many times). One is enough:
- Support for AWS Archival storage. This is a full stop. Forcing users to use hot storage for backup is recklessly wasteful.
- Support for user-mounted filesystems (via helper process and impersonation). On windows this is a separate disaster because the OS does not support concurrent connections to the same server with different user. (Microsoft invented SMB – and yet, here we are)
- Support for macOS multi-user environment (SIP, access: I made a workaround for myself here).
Nice-to-haves (not dealbreakers, but have been requested many times too):
- CPU throttling
- Prevent/pause/throttle backup with on battery power
- AWS cost management
- AWS object lock management
New developments:
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Thank you very much, appreciated!