Found parse-able files with different prefixes, did you forget to set the backup prefix?

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1

Sorry, what files exactly I need to check? I’ve removed all files for the old (“VM”) task from the NAS (manually, as Duplicati doesn’t do it properly).

What are “these backups”? I’m trying to recreate only “VM” task, others all fine. When I click “Recreate” button for the task I can see only the message: “Found 212 parse-able files (of 212 files) with different prefixes: VM X, VM Y, VM Z, did you forget to set the backup prefix?”

2

Let’s make sure I’m understanding this correctly.

  1. You’ve deleted a job we’ll call “VM” (I assume also deleting the local database but NOT the remote files)
  2. You manually deleted the remote files
  3. You created a new job called “VM” pointing to the same destination as the original one AND confirmed it has the same --prefix parameter as the old job
  4. You’re getting the “Found parse-able files” message when you use the “Database -> Recreate” button

If I’ve got that right, then the issue is that the Recreate function uses the remote database files to rebuild the local database. Since you manually deleted those files in step 2 above, there’s nothing which which Duplicati can use to rebuild database.

Again, if this is the case I think the error message should check whether or not --prefix is set and, if so, flat out say something like “the remote files with prefix VM could not be found”.

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3

If I’ve got that right, then the issue is that the Recreate function uses the remote database files to rebuild the local database. Since you manually deleted those files in step 2 above, there’s nothing which which Duplicati can use to rebuild database.

Absolutely right!

I think the error message should check whether or not --prefix is set and, if so, flat out say something like “the remote files with prefix VM could not be found”.

That would be much more clear, thank you!
Sorry, I haven’t realised that the problem is not about the prefix, just there is nothing to rebuild from. Thank you for pointing this out!

4

The error message intends to inform the user that there are indeed Duplicati files in the folder, but not with the current --prefix. For example, you set --prefix=abc, but the folder contains files named duplicati-* and zyz-*.

In this case there is no safe default to choose. But I can see that the error message is not easy to decipher.