Déjà Dup

No backups to restore

Asked by Richard

OK, this might be an old story, but I am pulling (what's left) of my hair out!
Had a hard drive failure, but no sweat (or so I thought) as running regular backups to an external drive with Deja Dup.
Installed new hard drive, reinstalled Ubuntu 11.10 (which was what I was running before) and tried to do a restore from the external drive via Deja Dup UI. No joy....restore failed with message "No backups to restore".
Thought might be something simple like path name to external drive having a space in it, so copied complete backup folder from external drive to home folder, ....so now have all backups in //home/richard/Backup
Tried Deja Dup UI again...same message.
Hum.... :(
Went to terminal.... entered
   duplicity --gio file:///home/richard/Backup /tmp/restore
which returned
   Local and Remote metadata are synchronized, no sync needed.
   Last full backup date: none
   GnuPG passphrase:
so entered keyring password and then got...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1359, in <module>
    with_tempdir(main)
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1342, in with_tempdir
    fn()
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1276, in main
    restore(col_stats)
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 591, in restore
    restore_get_patched_rop_iter(col_stats)):
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 613, in restore_get_patched_rop_iter
    backup_chain = col_stats.get_backup_chain_at_time(time)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/collections.py", line 940, in get_backup_chain_at_time
    raise CollectionsError("No backup chains found")
CollectionsError: No backup chains found

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!

Can anyone help? Am I doing something incredibly stupid?

FYI, requesting the directory listing (i.e., /Backup$ dir) for //home/richard/Backup returns...

2011-02-12_10.46.56.441841.dell-desktop.ful
2011-03-15_09.55.10.468692.dell-desktop.ful
2011-05-21_07.36.48.463818.dell-desktop.ful
2011-06-28_08.37.28.361698.dell-desktop.ful
2011-09-30_07.42.56.852491.dell-desktop.ful
2011-11-03_11.32.44.531859.dell-desktop.ful
2012-01-22_07.40.24.279462.dell-desktop.ful
2012-01-23_08.49.34.997655.dell-desktop.inc
2012-01-26_13.19.47.588749.dell-desktop.inc
2012-01-28_17.54.18.949592.dell-desktop.inc
2012-01-31_16.38.09.347510.dell-desktop.ful
2012-02-02_08.07.26.302798.dell-desktop.inc
2012-02-05_15.29.15.410559.dell-desktop.inc

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Déjà Dup Edit question
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Richard
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Revision history for this message
Michael Terry (mterry) said : 		#1

Hi! Is that the full file listing from that folder, or just a sampling? Can I have the full listing? (use pastebin.ubuntu.com if it's an enormous list)

That's an unusual filename format. Was the disk FAT32 formatted? (Which is fine, data should still be there, but you have to pass the right argument to duplicity, and it seems the filenames confused Deja Dup and it didn't pass the arguments for you either)

Revision history for this message
Richard (richardmorley) said : 		#2

Hi Michael,
First, thanks for taking the time to respond. Your help is really appreciated.
The file listing from the backup folder is a complete list.
I don't know what the formatting of the external drive is. It could be FAT32 as it is quite old. Is there a way to tell?

Revision history for this message
Michael Terry (mterry) said : 		#3

You can find out the formatting by doing the following:

sudo apt-get install gvfs-bin
gvfs-info -f /media/path/to/drive

And looking at the filesystem::type output.

If that's the full list, seems like it's missing some files. Is it possible you didn't copy all the files from the disk? There should be some "metadata" files that normally have ".manifest" or ".sigtar" suffixes, but with this filename scheme, I'm not sure what their suffix would be.

Revision history for this message
Richard (richardmorley) said : 		#4

Couldn't work out the FAT32 vs NTFS question in Ubuntu, so plugged the drive into an old XP machine and according to the drive properties it is NTFS.

Revision history for this message
Richard (richardmorley) said : 		#5

Hi Michael,
I simply copied the whole Backup folder.
I have just checked the drive and there is nothing else showing.

Revision history for this message
Richard (richardmorley) said : 		#6

richard@richard-Inspiron-1525:~$ gvfs-info -f /media/"Maxor Drive/Backup"
attributes:
  filesystem::size: 299992379392
  filesystem::free: 71435923456
richard@richard-Inspiron-1525:~$ cd /media/"Maxor Drive/Backup"
richard@richard-Inspiron-1525:/media/Maxor Drive/Backup$ dir
2011-02-12:10.46.56.441841.dell-desktop.ful
2011-03-15:09.55.10.468692.dell-desktop.ful
2011-05-21:07.36.48.463818.dell-desktop.ful
2011-06-28:08.37.28.361698.dell-desktop.ful
2011-09-30:07.42.56.852491.dell-desktop.ful
2011-11-03:11.32.44.531859.dell-desktop.ful
2012-01-22:07.40.24.279462.dell-desktop.ful
2012-01-23:08.49.34.997655.dell-desktop.inc
2012-01-26:13.19.47.588749.dell-desktop.inc
2012-01-28:17.54.18.949592.dell-desktop.inc
2012-01-31:16.38.09.347510.dell-desktop.ful
2012-02-02:08.07.26.302798.dell-desktop.inc
2012-02-05:15.29.15.410559.dell-desktop.inc

Revision history for this message
Michael Terry (mterry) said : 		#7

Hm, OK. NTFS shouldn't need shortened filenames.

Did you choose to encrypt the files when you created the backup?

If you run the command "file" on 2011-02-12_10.46.56.441841.dell-desktop.ful what does it say?

Can you open that file with the command "file-roller"?

This may be a stupid question, but I'm assuming you're sure that you created the backup with Deja Dup?

Revision history for this message
Richard (richardmorley) said : 		#8

Michael, I think my senility is getting worse and I need to up my dosage. Your last question got me thinking (....well, that's what I like to call it....), so I installed every backup utility I could find. Turns out that it was a Simple Backup archive.
So, the stupid questions are the best ones and I am now going to crawl away to bed with embarrassment and relief in equal measures!
Thank you soooo much and I do apologize most profusely for having wasted your time.

Revision history for this message
Michael Terry (mterry) said : 		#9

Yay! Glad this wasn't some wacky Deja Dup bug. :)