Déjà Dup requests root privileges when I try to restore a backup. Why?

It has a relatively naive approach to that. It asks for the root password if you are restoring any file outside of $HOME. Does your backup contain such files and were you trying to restore to the original locations? If not, this may be a bug.

If you can't or don't want to provide the root password, restore to a directory in your home folder (i.e. don't restore to 'original location').

I tried to restore files into my $home.

Gergely, can you file a bug? https://launchpad.net/deja-dup/+filebug

The form there has instructions for how to generate a log to upload. That log may help me figure out what the problem is.

This seems to be a problem again/still. I have a user-level backup done by the UI in my user session. My backup is to an nfs mount that my user has permission to.

I've done restore tests previously with success, but I tried one today and the UI demands root access. If I cancel the request, then the restore stops. If I allow the request, the restore fails with a permission error because all the files are owned by my user with 700 permissions. I was attempting to restore to /tmp/restore-test, a directory owned by me with 755 permissions. Starting a restore to ~/restore-test works correctly and runs as my user, but I don't have the space there to let it run to completion.