Deleting Old Full backups

Hi

Well, by going into the DD Preferences, I found that I can change how long to keep backups, even when backing up randomly. (Answers my Q1.)

After setting: Keep the backups for at least a month and running a new backup, I still have backup data from May 04, on by destination storage HD. I started with DD then and ran my first backup May 04 and always had had the backups being saved as Forever until today. Maybe that has something to do with my data being saved since then?

Or, as I stated in:

https://answers.launchpad.net/deja-dup/+question/62324

Could this behaviour be related to these Duplicity bug(s):

https://bugs.launchpad.net/duplicity/+bug/519948

https://bugs.launchpad.net/duplicity/+bug/815507

http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/duplicity-talk/2011-07/msg00057.html

Hi! Sorry for slow response. Yes, you should be able to control when backups get deleted even when backing up manually.

I have not been able to reproduce the 'not deleting old backups' issue. Note however, that DD largely decides on its own whether to keep backups (for example, if there aren't at least two full backups, it won't delete any until a third full backup is made, for safety's sake). That's why the preference is worded as it is: "keep backups at least a month".

Can you provide me a list of the manifest files in your backup location? Something like:

ls /media/DISK/*.manifest*

Oh, and it's unlikely to be related to the signature files issues in duplicity. Signature files shouldn't be fooling DD about whether or not backups are actually on the remote end.

Hi Michael,

I understand now that you have set the backups to be always have 2 full backups to manage risk. I, by spending a little time looking closer at the GUI, understand the configuration aspects better also. Thanks for the assurance that any of the "bugs" that I quoted about Duplicity most likely would manifest themselves in DD. ;)

As for managing risk, I deleted all my backups (rm-r) and intend to re-backup and delete each previous full backup, probably once a month, with increments between them. So, sorry I no longer have access to any previous manifests.

Mike

Hi Michael,

I understand now that you have set the backups to always have 2 full backups to manage risk. I, by spending a little time looking closer at the GUI, understand the configuration aspects better also. Thanks for the assurance that any of the "bugs" that I quoted about Duplicity, most likely would not manifest themselves in DD. ;)

As for managing risk, I deleted all my backups (rm-r) and intend to re-backup and delete each previous full backup, probably once a month, with increments between them. So, sorry I no longer have access to any previous manifests.

Mike

Oops, disregard the first message, with it's erroneous statements.

You are going to delete each full backup why? For space reasons?

Yes, until I buy more HD space.

Also, I want to watch closer, how much space I'll need to buy with a new system, given my progressively larger video data content. Using a Raid 1 backup, I will have to have at least +triple, what I expect to have on my system, if I want to save two backups all the time. (I think) I am going to try different scenarios.

Now to use DD to backup before, I run into an "oops" scenario.

Thanks.

Well, the new backup to my external HD didn't work now. I get this message:

BackendException: Could not copy /tmp/duplicity-fO6upn-tempdir/mktemp-FArOfi-2 to /media/duplicity-full.20110729T151911Z.vol1.difftar.gz

Now what! Some how delete the /tmp/duplicity-fO6upn-tempdir/mktemp-FArOfi-2 ?

I need to go, if you could give me some general expectations of what I must do, I will try to follow with that later.

(By using the remove command above I emptied the external HD, It did give me a new UUID in the Path of /media/ UUID_#, if that has anything to do with it, on top of seemingly not being able to copy /tmp?duplicity... to?media/duplicity.... vol 1. difftar.gz. (Of course there is no vol 1. anymore)

I am starting to rethink, doing anymore deletions of backups, like I did last night, is not such a good idea for me!

Sorry, for the trouble of having to respond to my deliberate misuse of DD.

Thanks.

No, I guess I should remove this file: /media/duplicity-full.20110729T151911Z.vol1.difftar.gz

Would the new path name to my External Drive Backup Destination of /media/<new UUID#> have anything to do with it?

Nope. I can't find any file called < /media/duplicity-full.20110729T151911Z.vol1.difftar.gz> in Nautilus. I checked as a normal user with looking in hidden files also.

Maybe if I removed DD from my system and then re-installed it, I could do a new full backup, to start afresh. I dunno ...

I went into root and still couldn't find that file. (/media/duplicity-full.20110729T151911Z.vol1.difftar). I find I was wrong about having changing the External HD's UUID#, what was changed was the partition designation. It used to be /dev/sdf1, then last night it was changed to /dev/sdg1 after removing the data, but now after restarting my computer, the partition designation is back to it's original designation of /dev/sdf1. Strange ... if that has anything at all to do with it!

Thanks.

Hi,

All I can think of doing is removing DD and all it's .cache and then reinstall. (~/.cache/deja-dup) has lots of entries of duplicity, but does not have any instance of, <duplicity-full.20110729T151911Z.vol1.difftar.gz>, that was referenced above as not being in /media.

So, I propose doing:

sudo apt-get remove deja-dup && sudo apt-get autoclean && sudo apt-get autoremove

Then manually pluck out all the entries in ~/.cache/deja-dup that remain,

Reinstall this time to try aptitude:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install deja-dup

Then try doing another full-backup.

What do you think, Michael

Thanks.

Well, I did as I outlined above and after re-installing, when running a backup I get a similar message as before:

BackendException: Could not copy /tmp/duplicity-D5fSqW-tempdir/mktemp-beZYsz-2 to /media/duplicity-full.20110730T025855Z.vol1.difftar.gz

I am out of ideas.

Well don't I feel stupid. I forgot to reset my backup destination in preferences. I set it back to where it was before I re-installed and now DD is doing a new full backup.

Sorry, for all the crud!

Thank you.

I have a successful full backup!

Thanks.