Crashplan is out - Looking for alternative for 3-2-1 backup scheme

Today I received a mail from Code42 (the company behind crashplan) that they’re exiting the home backup business and thus I’m investigating alternatives. One of these is Duplicati.

I do however have some questions regarding Duplicati:

  1. As far as I can tell Duplicati 2 implements an auto-updater, can this be turned off? Couldn’t see it under ‘settings’. I have a strong dislike for auto-update schemes (especially in beta, or under development software) and I prefer to manage updates through apt

  2. How does Duplicati handle running out of storage space on local destinations?

  3. How does Duplicati handle missing destination locations? If I designate an external device as destination & it’s not plugged in, how will Duplicati react?

  4. How does Duplicati handle missing source locations? If I select a source that’s on an external device and it’s not plugged in, will it be smart enough to not assume the files deleted? Once the device is plugged back in, how will it cope?

  5. Any plans on implementing inode notify?

I think these are my most pressing concerns for now :slight_smile: Please advice.

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The auto-updater does not update, but just informs you that there is a new version. You can turn it off completely by setting the environment variable:

AUTOUPDATER_Duplicati_POLICY=NEVER

It just errors out, there is no clever handling of “out-of-space” situations.

It will report it as an error.

The logic is there for sending in a list of added/changed/deleted files, such that the backup can run without having to scan the entire disk. The logic for storing these events from the OS notify is not implemented and not on my “most important” list yet.

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It just errors out, there is no clever handling of “out-of-space” situations.

So it’ll fill a drive till there is zero bytes remaining? If I recall correctly filesystems such as zfs or btrfs don’t really like that

It will report it as an error.

How vocal is the application? Will it pop-up warnings & errors or can I only see those by going into the UI?

The logic is there for sending in a list of added/changed/deleted files, such that the backup can run without having to scan the entire disk. The logic for storing these events from the OS notify is not implemented and not on my “most important” list yet.

Good to know, Thank you for your time.

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Yes, it just fills up the filesystem.

If you run the tray-icon version, it will use notifications on the OS to show messages. You can also configure jabber or email notifications.

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One last question, how stable is the backup/restore mechanism at present? Seeing the application itself is still in beta, are changes to that mechanism itself planned?

Are the features for the ‘stable’ release already defined & is there a roadmap?

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There are issues we are still working out, but no deep changes are planned to the core backup/restore algorithm. The most annoying issues are related to performance and recreating the local database.

Not entirely, but we have discussed fixing the Windows installer and adding some security features before releasing a stable version.

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Not entirely, but we have discussed fixing the Windows installer and adding some security features before releasing a stable version.

Oh please do include the option to install it as a service a priori.

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I’m curious how --quota-size=1GB would fit into this scenario. Say I have a 5GB cloud storage account and set my quota-size to 1GB, does Duplicati do anything when that 1GB size is reached or approached?

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It does not do anything. The option is there only to override or provide a quota number, if no such number is provided by the backend.

It is intended to be displayed in the UI as an indicator for how much space is left.

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Got it, thanks. Is the UI display implemented (I didn’t see any change in my UI with or without the value) nor did I find anything in the code? If not, do you mind if I add a Feature topic requesting it?

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On the back of this, and further comparing it to Crashplan, I’d love it if Duplicati wouldn’t alert the person where it is installed, but someone else (me) who is managing the backups for his entire family (i.e. via email) if any errors occurred.

Also, I would love to see fully automated updates to the client app, without requiring user interaction, as Crashplan handled that.

Either way, love Duplicati, have been running it for two months against my ownCloud, and it’s been pretty solid.

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You can set that up as explained here:

There is also this thread suggesting a better interface than emails, and an offer from an external party with a monitoring service:

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Sorry about reviving this old thread, but this particular thing is confusing me a little.

If you mean that after setting that environment variable Duplicati shouldn’t even inform about a new version, then there’s something wrong. My experience is it still does, at least on Windows 7.

I have tried setting that variable as both a system and a user environment variable, but neither works, I still get the information pop-up of a new version. Additionally I have also tried to set the environment variable AUTOUPDATER_Duplicati_SKIP_UPDATE=1, but that didn’t change it either.

Not that this is a big problem in any way, or maybe I have got it all wrong. I’m just like the OP and dislike automatic updaters in practically any software and habitually turn them off. I prefer to update only when I have the time to test the new version properly in order to see if it breaks anything.

Just a small remark. When an external disk for backup is not available, it will on MacOS (and probably other unix-like environments) not simply fail but instead create a new backup directory where you do not want it but then fail because that directory is not in sync with the local database. The new directory may (on MacOS ‘will’ — in case of automount) then prevent the disk to mount properly, leading to permanent failure of your backups. To prevent this from happening, some special configuration settings are available, see MacOS USB destination confusion (which should be instead called ‘non-permanent disk availability on non-Windows issues’.