Can I abort a backup entirely if a file cannot be read?

Let’s say VSS snapshot creation fails, but I want to proceed with the backup anyway (so it’s “on” or “auto” rather than “required”). It turns out that a file is locked, causing Duplicati to warn “Failed to process path”, but it proceeds and considers the file to be deleted, removing it from the backup.

Is there a way to have Duplicati abort the process if any file can’t be read? I don’t want it to delete the file from storage.

Naturally, you can have it keep several old versions, but when you restored the most recent version or a specific version, you’d be left wondering what files might be missing.

I can’t think of a direct way, however there are usually only a few reasons. You can probably avoid the locked file issue by setting –snapshot-policy=required, and permission issues by running as SYSTEM.

Duplicati.WindowsService.exe and Duplicati Tutorial 02 Install Duplicati as a Service but be careful of Windows version updates as they tend to wipe the SYSTEM profile into Windows.old when they run…

Your request sounds slightly complex in that you don’t want to abort on VSS failure but you do want to abort if VSS failure actually winds up hitting a locked file, making a warning. Did I misunderstand that?

Viewing the log files of a backup job seems like it could help, and if not, what about Reporting options?

You understood correctly. Logs and reports are interesting options, thanks.