Cannot get purge to work

#1

I would like to delete all copies of a file that was backed up from my Linux /home directory to a Dropbox backend. Let’s say the file is called unwanted_file.txt, so I have run the following in terminal:

duplicati-cli purge dropbox://home?authid=MyAuthID unwanted_file.txt --dbpath=/home/user/.config/Duplicati/12345678901234567890.sqlite --dry-run

but I get the following error:

ErrorID: PurgeWouldRemoveEntireFileset
Refusing to purge 138852 files from fileset with ID 1, as that would remove the entire fileset.

I don’t understand this. The file has only been backed up 3 times, and this numbers suggests the command wants to delete all files in my /home backup. Trying something similar in the GUI commandline and the process seems to simply never end; I let it run for over 2 hours and it still said “Running …” with --dry-run.

How can I simply delete these 3 file backups?

#2

Does it help if you prefix the filename like this: --include=unwanted_file.txt

#3

No, I tried it and got the exact same error:

ErrorID: PurgeWouldRemoveEntireFileset
Refusing to purge 138852 files from fileset with ID 1, as that would remove the entire fileset.
#4

What version are you using? Version 2.0.4.31 fixed a bug involving purging on Linux that would remove too many files.

#5

In my test environment, the purge command did not give any output.

When using the commandline tools from the GUI, you have to specify the passphrase (--passphrase="mypassword"), because there is no way to provide it when the operation is running.

Duplicati stores the complete path for each file and folder and it expects a complete path as input for operations like purge. Wildcards are allowed.
Replace unwanted_file.txt with "*/unwanted_file.txt" (including double quotes).

1 Like
Dry-run Flag Not Documented Correctly
#6

I am reanimating this old thread. I have the same message which I also do not unterstand so instead of a new thread I think it makes sense to continue this thread!

A backup set which is 3 or 4 years old with hundreds of versions and about 107k different files backuped.
Windows 10, Duplicati Version 2.0.6.3_beta_2021-06-17

If I browse the backup I have different folders and many, many different files. Now I want do purge Thunderbird Windows Index Files. These files are in folders called mozmsgs. So I made a Filter. A Regex .*mozmsgs.*

"C:\Program Files\Duplicati 2\Duplicati.CommandLine.exe" purge "file://\\server\share\duplicati\backup01" --backup-name="local-01" --dbpath="C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Duplicati\jobdbs\local-01.sqlite" --encryption-module="aes" --compression-module="zip" --dblock-size="250MB" --passphrase="xxxxxxx" --disable-module="console-password-input"  --asynchronous-upload-limit=2 --synchronous-upload=false --include="[.*mozmsgs.*]" --dry-run

And I also geht the message

Listing remote folder …

ErrorID: PurgeWouldRemoveEntireFileset
Refusing to purge 0 files from fileset with ID 1594, as that would remove the entire fileset.
To delete a fileset, use the “delete” command.

Does this mean that there is a version that only contains “mozmsgs” files and therefor I have to delete this version manually before I can use purge?
Weired is the message “purge 0 files”

Update 11.01.2023
One step further! I looked in the database and saw that FileSet 1594 is a fileset with no files! It is also listed with no files and no size
image

So I deleted version 18 with the delete command
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Now re-run the purge with include="[,*mozmsg.*]" and it is now doing it’s job!

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