Double checking: how to delete a specific backup run?

Support
#1

I have a backup which has two backups runs in it:

  • The first, original backup which contains everything, and is several months old. In the GUI restore window, this is listed with “1:” at the beginning of the version string
  • A backup from a few days ago, which appears to be very partial and excludes a massive number of files; when selected, I don’t see a union of the two backup sets. This is listed with “0:” at the beginning of the version string.

Are backups actually numbered backward? (and they change numbers as additional backups are made?!)

To delete the partial bad backup, from what I’ve read, I should, from the web GUI, run the “delete” command and specify --version 0. Is this correct? I really, really do not want my one good backup run to be deleted!

Also: this backup doesn’t list any successful backups on the main page. “Last successful backup:never.” I have tried a database repair and even a delete-and-recreate, and still the status page shows no backups. They’re visible in the restore pane, however…

#2

Yes, versions are numbered “backwards” with the most recent being 0, the next oldest, 1, etc. so they do indeed change numbers are ‘fresher’ backups are added.

This isn’t an answer, but did you read through the ‘delete’ command docs?

I’d suggest using the --dry-run parameter to see what would happen if you actually did the delete.

Are you (not) seeing the missing by browsing what’s restorable for backup 0 or is there some other method you’re using? I’m curious what changed to cause files to stop being backed up…

#3

Yup, I’ve read the docs and searched the forum a bit. Honestly the documentation is extremely sparse and somewhat vague; I had initially thought the command would individually remove files, not that it would remove a particular backup “run.” And if one strictly reads the documentation, a file (not a version of a file!) would be deleted using the delete command.

I believe the partial backup was caused by my attempting to restore the duplicati configuration files first as part of a disaster recovery. Duplicati immediately kicked off a backup of my almost-completely-empty home directory, and thus marked everything as deleted. I need to get rid of that backup, without touching the prior complete backup.

#4

Ah, that makes sense. You could leave the partial backup in place as the next one would see all the files added back in as “new” but recognize their blocks have already been backed up so not re-upload the data.

They only side effect I can think of is there would be a break in the “history” between the versions, but since there’s only one historical version already backed up you wouldn’t be losing much.