How to pause a running backup?

Support
#1

Hi,

How do I pause a running backup? I had to quickly stop duplicacys use of the internet while doing the initial backup and couldn’t, so killed the process which caused my backup to get corrupted. I’ve tried running as a service and pausing the service, which does work, but then when I go to resume the service, it doesn’t start back up.

Also, am I best doing the initial backup with the GUI tool and then start to use the service to take it over (so I can get progress and start and stop on demand), or should I start with the service?

Also, if I click the stop, will that act like a pause, ie when I start again it’ll know what it’s done and what it hasn’t? Does it stop gracefully?

Thanks

#2

you shouldnt need to kil the process? The stop button works instantly. When starting the backup again, it will take less time with the files already processed/backed up.
A pause/resume would still be better though, yes.

#3

I’m not sure if it is bug that you couldn’t stop the backup by clicking the stop button, but even if you need to kill the Duplicacy GUI process (as well as the Duplicacy CLI process running in the background) the backup won’t get corrupted, because of the database-less design of Duplicacy.

#4

My backup did get corrupted though because it spent hours trying to upload one small pdf and then threw an error that it couldn’t upload a block.

#5

An incomplete backup will just leave some unreferenced chunks on the storage. The final snapshot file will only be uploaded as the last step of the backup operation, after all files chunks have been successfully uploaded.

#6

Good to know that stopping a backup shouldn’t result in any catastrophic problems.

#1 - But - what happens to the Rev Numbers?

  • Will the second backup attempt end up getting Rev#2, thus making Rev#1 an incomplete backup and hence should never be used for restore purposes?

#2 - Is there any help doc that covers suggested/recommended way(s) to stopping a backup in progress and what to expect? - I couldn’t find any. Might be something to make a note under “backup” command itself.

#7

Snapshot file is uploaded in the very end. Thus the backup process cannot leave incomplete revision at the target. It’s safe to interrupt backup at any point.

I’d go as far as saying that if you stumble at another backup program where interrupting a backup leads to a corruption or otherwise leaves datastore in a bad state — you should immediately stop using that program and switch to the one properly designed. E.g. duplicacy.

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