Mysterious snapshot with id "duplicacyweb"

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#1

A scheduled check reported a new snapshot, duplicacyweb, with no revisions:

2020-12-16 04:32:25.702 INFO SNAPSHOT_CHECK
         snap | rev |  | files | bytes | chunks | bytes | uniq | bytes | new | bytes |
 duplicacyweb | all |  |       |       |      0 |     0 |    0 |     0 |     |       |

It was not present in the prior check 24 hours earlier.

I’ve tried pruning but it’s not detected:

bash-5.0# cd /cache/localhost/all
bash-5.0# /config/bin/duplicacy_linux_x64_2.7.2 prune -id duplicacyweb -dry-run
Storage set to /usb-hdd
...
No snapshot to delete

(1) Any idea what caused it? I haven’t done anything out of the ordinary.
(2) Is it safe to manually delete the snapshot from storage?

#2

duplicacyweb is a dummy backup id used by check, copy, and prune jobs. I suspect it got into the storage because a restore operation used this id to list existing backup ids on the storage. Which storage are you using?

1 Like
#3

Disk. It’s a USB disk.

I had some issues that required manually editing the preferences file. I wonder if I corrupted it - anything here seem off? This (and another storage entry) are the only references to “duplicacyweb” I could find.

bash-5.0# pwd
/cache/localhost/all/.duplicacy
bash-5.0# more preferences 
[
    {
        "name": "USB",
        "id": "duplicacyweb",
        "repository": "",
        "storage": "/usb-hdd",
        "encrypted": false,
        "no_backup": true,
        "no_restore": true,
        "no_save_password": false,
        "nobackup_file": "",
        "keys": null
    },
#5

The closing braces have a comma after it. Are there any other entries after this? Otherwise, this comma cannot be there.

[
    {
        "name": 
         ...
        "keys":
    },
    {
        "name": 
         ...
        "keys":
    }
]
#6

Yes other entries, the final one without a comma (valid json.)

1 Like
#7

I noticed an unexpected snapshot in my recent backups - duplicacyweb - with no revisions, so I google’d and the only hit was this post by me from almost three years ago.

gchen had asked which storage I was using - then it was Disk, now it’s WebDAV.

Strange.

#8

Can you check the timestamps of the ‘snapshots/duplicacyweb’ directory in the storage, to see when it was created/modified?

#9 
$ ls -l
total 16
drwxr-xr-x   2 www-data www-data 4096 Mar 31 16:46 benchmark
drwxr-xr-x 258 www-data www-data 4096 Mar 29 08:21 chunks
-rw-r--r--   1 www-data www-data  586 Mar 29 07:24 config
drwxr-xr-x  13 www-data www-data 4096 Jun 30 07:35 snapshots

$ ls -l snapshots/
total 44
drwxr-xr-x 2 www-data www-data 4096 Jun 30 07:35 duplicacyweb
...

$ ls -l snapshots/duplicacyweb/
total 0
#10

Does the timestamp (Jun 30 07:35) coinside with the starting time of any job? Remove this directory and see if it will reappear.

#11

It doesn’t match any scheduled job but it’s possible I ran one manually.

I deleted the snapshot a few days ago and it hasn’t reappeared. The prior appearance was 3 years ago so I’m not expecting it to.

More a curiosity than a problem.