Create "templates" of sources to backup

Features
1

If you could create a “template” of sources, you could use them twice in different jobs (one frequently to my NAS and another less frequent online); and any changes to template would make to both jobs immediately.

The “template” editor could be improved with a “disk usage” per file/folder, so when creating it you could anticipate disk/bandwidth usage.

Thanks for your great job!

2

Thanks for using (and participating with) Duplicati!

This sort of feature has been discussed a few times, but no time has been found yet to actually work on it. :frowning:

I like the idea but due to the variances involved in compressability of source file blocks (eg. text = lots, video = little/none) it would be a very rough estimate… MAX destination disk usage estimates could be made based on a worst-case (NO compress) assumption - but that would pretty much be the same size as the source…

3

Unfortunately true…

Others have suggested creating a single folder, say C:\backupsources and then setup Duplicati to back up that folder.

Then simply add symlinks to this folder and set --symlink-policy=follow.

Not a perfect solution, but works for most cases.

4

Is that right? I thought “store” meant it would back up the fact that there was a link but not actually follow the link…

  --symlink-policy = Store
    Use this option to handle symlinks differently. The "store" option will
    simply record a symlink with its name and destination, and a restore will
    recreate the symlink as a link. Use the option "ignore" to ignore all
    symlinks and not store any information about them. Previous versions of
    Duplicati used the setting "follow", which will cause symlinked files to
    be included and restore as normal files.

To be honest, it’s a little unclear exactly what is done when --symlink-policy isn’t explicitly set…

5

Good catch! It is “follow” that is the intended option. I have edited my post, in case someone copies my explanation.

The initial line explains it: --symlink-policy = Store, meaning that by default it will use Store as the value for this option.

6

is
--symlink-policy = follow
still available or not in the current version of Duplicati?

7

Assuming you mean a 2.0.x version (beta or canary) then, yes. I believe the comment above was trying to say that the default value USED to be follow but is now store.

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