Duplicati as Service running but no backup or trayicon

Support
1

Hi,

I am trying to setup Duplicati in a cloud VPS to backup files to an off-site storage. I have setup the Duplicati as a Service by following the intructions here: Other Command Line Utilities - Duplicati 2 User's Manual. It start runnning automatically as expected.

The VPS is restarted everynight to take image backups and I have a scheduled Duplicati to take file backups every morning. With this setup, Duplicati is not taking any backups. It only starts taking backup when a user is logged into the VPS and opens Duplicati GUI.

So what am I missing? How can I make Duplicati work automatically after VPS boot and continue taking backups per its schedule without manually opening the GUI? Should I be configuring the trayicon as service too? Is there a way?

Thanks for your help.

Regards,

Beko

2

Welcome to the forum.

If you are running as a service, then backups will run without the trayicon running. If you do start the trayicon, you need to make sure to start it with the --no-hosted-server option so that it connects to the running service, instead of starting another instance of the Duplicati backup engine.

If you have not been doing that, then I suspect you have configured that separate Duplicati instance with job definitions and backup schedules. The instance running as a service may have a blank configuration.

Try logging in to the VPS and do not start the tray icon. Instead just use a web browser to navigtate to http://localhost:8200 - this should bring up the Duplicati engine running as a service. Do you see your jobs configured there?

3

That was it… I was trying the run the schedule at port 8300, because that is the port which opens when I open the GUI but I guess it is for the user to do another task while something else is running at 8200… Anyway… Thank you so much, it works as intended…

Regards,

Beko

4

What is the recommended way to check which Duplicati process uses which port? On Windows? Linux?

5

On Windows you can use netstat, but I prefer to use PowerShell:

PS C:\> Get-NetTCPConnection -OwningProcess (Get-Process -Name 'Duplicati*').Id -State 'Listen'

LocalAddress                        LocalPort RemoteAddress                       RemotePort State       AppliedSetting OwningProcess
------------                        --------- -------------                       ---------- -----       -------------- -------------
127.0.0.1                           8200      0.0.0.0                             0          Listen                     5240

On Linux you can use netstat but you need to check the mono-sgen process. If you have other programs running using the mono framework besides Duplicati, you may see more things here:

# netstat -a -n -p | grep 'LISTEN.*mono-sgen'
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:8200            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      704740/mono-sgen

You can use ps to confirm that PID 704740 is indeed Duplicati:

# ps 704740
    PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
 704740 ?        SNl   32:53 /usr/bin/mono-sgen /usr/lib/duplicati/Duplicati.Server.exe --webservice-interface=any --webservice-port=8200
6

Not exactly… Duplicati default installation is to run at user logon. For machines that allow multiple users to log in at the same time, each of these user instances must bind to a unique port. The first instance binds to 8200, the next 8300, and so on.

Glad you got it working!

7

Aha! I have the same problem. I’m not sure how to fix it though. It was fine until I updated to the new beta a while ago. My backups are running on port 8300, and port 8200 shows no backups are operating.

I’m not sure how I can fix it so the service runs my backups. Thanks!

8

First step is to figure out which port is running which instance. Exit the Duplicati tray icon but leave the service running. Then visit 8200 or 8300 and see which one still responds. The one that does respond, do you see your backup jobs there? I would assume/hope so if you had been using the service instance in the past.

9

My backups are running with the tray icon, port 8300.

10

Ok, so no backup sets are shown in the service instance of Duplicati? Sounds like it was never actually set up, and Duplicati has been running jobs using your tray icon instance all this time.

You can migrate the databases to the location used by the service instance, if that’s really what you want to do. Or since it’s working with the tray icon instance you can leave it that way, and just uninstall the service one. Honestly if this is just a regular laptop/desktop used by a single person, I don’t think the service approach is worth the trouble.

11

So You’re right, I can get rid of the service. I hadn’t realised until today that it wasn’t doing anything.

My next problem is that the tray icon never runs automatically at startup. I think there’s another thread for that problem but I haven’t worked through it yet.

12

Are you running 2.0.5.1_beta already? If not, you can download the MSI and install the newer version. You’ll be asked if you want it to run on startup, so it will fix that for you. Alternatively, you can manually add a shortcut to Duplicati.GUI.TrayIcon.exe in your Startup group.