How do I back up my Duplicacy install? (Or move my Duplicacy install to another machine)

[cheetahsquirrelporcu]

I spent some time searching around for this and couldn’t find anything. Sorry, it must be really obvious to regular users…

Use case:

• I have Duplicacy Web UI installed on one laptop
• I have a few Storages, a few Backups, and a few Schedules configured and it’s been working great for a year
• If that laptop, dedicated to running Duplicacy and all my backups, ever dies, I’m not sure exactly what steps I need to take to make everything work again on a new laptop

1. How do I back up my Duplicacy “universe”, so if anything happens to the laptop, I don’t lose my backups?
2. Any special considerations when encryption is enabled on the Storage?

[saspus]

Backup (by copying to some location that is being backed up) stuff from under .duplicacy_web: (use search in the filesystem as some files, like filters are buried)

• filters for each backup job
• settings.json — settings
• duplicacy.json — configs
• if you want to keep stats — stats folder

(Stuff under “repositories” folder, inspite of scary name, is temporary, does not need to be preserved, and can be discarded any time)

And separately:

• credentials to your storage accounts
• storage encryption password and/or pair of RSA keys, if setup

You would need to re-setup storages again anyway because some credentials are stored in those files encrypted. As well as reset application password.

Myself — I don’t bother. I only keep data needed to access storage (in password manager) such as login, password, 2FA generator. Not even application keys generated for duplicacy; I can always generate new ones. And the encryption password. That’s it.

Why…

• … not storage? adding one storage is trivial
• … not backup jobs? adding backup job is trivial (one backup job for the whole machine)
• … same about schedules.
• … elaborate regex exclusion rules? I don’t use filters and dislike the idea of having one centralized exclusion list in general. Instead, metadata (which the exclusion flag ultimately is part of) shall be stored right next to and move around with the data it describes: on macOS this is accomplished via TM exclusion xattr. On windows and other OSes you can take advantage or .nobackup file support.
• … web GUi password? Don’t save it either. Browser remembers it.

To summarize: only two things are needed: encryption secrets and access to cloud storage account.

[cheetahsquirrelporcu]

To summarize: only two things are needed: encryption secrets and access to cloud storage account.

Outstanding. I like your approach.

How do I hook a fresh Duplicacy install into my old Duplicacy backups/storages/repositories? I’ve searched everywhere on this forum and but not finding anything useful.

For example, in a fresh Duplicacy install there are (obviously) no storages and no backups. How do I connect Duplicacy to the old storage, and the old backups that have all my backed up data?

[saspus]

@cheetahsquirrelporcu

How do I connect Duplicacy to the old storage

You follow exact same steps you have added this storage initially. Only this time, duplicacy will find config file on the target and instead of initializing a new repository will import existing.

If you forget the path to the duplicacy data folder – look in your target storage using other tools, like web interface, or CyberDuck, or Transmit, etc. You want the folder name that contains the config, file and chunks, snapshots, etc sub folders.

@cheetahsquirrelporcu

and the old backups that have all my backed up data?

Same idea here – add the backup task exactly the same way as before, which boils down to using the the same snapshot_id. If you forget snapshot id – look under snapshots folder on the target, there will be one or more subfolders. Names of those subfolders are snapshot_ids. (I don’t remember whether you’ll have to type it in, or whether duplicacy_web will prompt you to pick one from the list)

Actually, do go through this exercise. (e.g. close duplciacy, rename the .duplciacy_web folder, and launch duplicacy again. It will open as new and then you can go through the steps to re-attach to the same storage. Without doing that you can’t be sure your backup is restorable, its’ worth testing restore from scratch.

[cheetahsquirrelporcu]

This is outstanding. THANK YOU THANK YOU. This helps me so much, you can’t imagine.