This error indicates that there was something wrong when trying to initialize the repository directory under ~/.duplicacy-web/repositories/locahost. Check the log file ~/.duplicacy-web/logs/duplicacy_web.log for related error messages.
Indeed, that seems to have been the case, somehow, in a weird way. My duplicacy temporary folder was in tmp/.duplicacy-web/repositories and it has worked fine for months and years. But now it turns out that /tmp only has 12 GB of space (I have no idea why and where this is set on my OMV server, but that’s what it is. I suspect that this setting was changed with some recent OMV update). So It was that temp-folder that became filled up to the brink and since duplicacy is working again now, I suspect that I gave it a new temp folder, I assume that this is what caused the problem.
@gchen perhaps dulplicacy web could output a warning when disk space is running low in a directory that is apparently vital for duplicacy being able to do pretty much anything?