So I’ve been looking for a while for a Linux tool that can do for my Linux workstations something akin to what I do with Acronis on my Windows systems, namely run a nightly incremental backup to local storage ( usually a RAID 1 pair ). Broadly speaking, it looks like Duplicati will do that ( although what I really want to be able to do with this backup is to restore an entire failed system drive if necessary, not just user data. Acronis will do that, but looks like Duplicati can’t, at least for Linux ).
However, my problem now is that I have run my first backup ( on ‘/’ ), and have got 67000 warnings. I’m not even nearly going to be able to look at 67000 warnings, but it’s apparent from the first couple of pages that the issue is simply UnauthorizedAccessException to numerous files and paths. If Duplicati is running as me, I guess this is only to be expected. I’m the only user on this system, and I have sudo, but I don’t operate as root.
So the question is, can I manage Duplicati as me, but have Duplicati run as root ( or switch to an euid that can access all the files ) ? Or can I create a script to launch a Duplicati backup as sudo from the command line ? If I can’t get Duplicati to backup, for example, /etc, then it’s not much use to me.
If you prefer GUI, you run browser as you and browse to a root-using Duplicati service,
probably at http://localhost:8200. There is a requirement to have a GUI password.
Temporary signin token is probably the best path to first login to set Settings password.
If you like a TrayIcon for its colorful indications and little menu, you can also set that up.
--no-hosted-server: Set this option to not spawn a local service, use if the TrayIcon should connect to a running service
--webservice-password: The password required to access the webserver. This option is saved so you do not need to set it on each run. Setting an empty value disables the password.
I do have a tray icon. When I click it, it takes me to a browser window that is pointed at localhost:8200, which I assumed was running as a service. I only ever intend to use Duplicati locally ( at least at the moment ), so I believe I’m using some sort of default auto generated credential, because login is automatic. This interface is what I used to set up my initial backup parameters. I got here on the back of the comment in the docs that says :
For users with a desktop environment and no special requirements, the TrayIcon instance is the recommended way to run Duplicati.
It seems that Duplicati considers the desire to backup a whole system as a ‘special requirement’, which I think is a little debatable, but OK, I shall follow the ‘server as a service’ path instead and see how far I get.