Odd issue after installing as service and Duplicati.GUI.TrayIcon.exe

Hi,

I read this post Migrating from User to Service install on Windows and followed instructions per tophee’s
video.
After that I port forwarded 8200 to my computer now when I connect remotely I get one interface where I crated backup but when I’m at the computer/local I get another new interface? What am I doing wrong here?
Why Duplicati.GUI.TrayIcon.exe is not connecting to service instance?

Screenshots:



TIA!

When launching the Duplicati.GUI.TrayIcon.exe you need to tell it not to launch another instance of the back end server, simply connect to the already running service.

To do this add " --no-hosted-server" to the end of any shortcuts you have for the GUI

"C:\Program Files\Duplicati\Duplicati.GUI.TrayIcon.exe" --no-hosted-server

Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately when I added that to my desktop shortcut and opened it opened another instance :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
I will try to record video showing what I mean.

Here’s the video Screencast Not Found
After I start with --no-hosted-server shortcut I’m unable to connect remotely no matter if I close Duplicati.GUI.TrayIcon.exe or restart services. At the end of its visible that its trying to connect but it can’t.
Any help is appreciated.

I’m a little confused what the ultimate goal is here - it sounds like you’re trying to be able to manage a remote computer’s Duplicati installation via the local computer’s web browser, is that correct?

Yes, ultimate goal is to be able remotely monitor/manage Duplicati. As already suggested here it looks like when opened from local computer another instance is being launched.

Thanks!

I am seeing the same thing on 2.0.12.

I am not sure if it started with this version if duplicati or if it was the Windows 10 upgrade to 1709. Duplicati being run as service.

Only reason I noticed it was the duplicati icon looks similar to my KiTTy and I accidentally double clicked it instead. I noticed the red duplicati tray icon double checked my desktop icon had the --no-hosted-server after it. If you run the trayicon program from the command prompt it works correctly. Other than that I haven’t had much time to troubleshoot it.

OK - then if you want to use the Tray Icon (which isn’t necessary, btw) then you’d probably want to use the following call:
Duplicati.GUI.TrayIcon.exe --no-hosted-server --hosturl=<url and port of remote system>

However, the “Open” option of the tray icon simply opens a web page so you could just as easily make a bookmark in your browser to the same <url and port of remote system> and get to it that way.

Note that Duplicati isn’t really designed to be externally exposed on the internet. Sure it can have a password required to log into it, but that’s designed more for local user control than being safe on the internet.

Even the default web interface is non-SSL - meaning if you are using that unsecured interface over the internet somebody could monitor your transfers and be able to grab your encryption password or Destination login information if you happen to visit those pages in the GUI.

You mentioned port forwarding in your initial post so if this isn’t running just local (on your own machine or LAN) hopefully it’s at least running over a VPN or SSH connection. If not, please let us know so that we can try to help make sure you’re not exposing your data to unnecessary risk.

Thanks for sharing that!

Ok, on the remote computer I’ve deleted shortcut from Windows startup folder which prevented loading Duplicati.GUI.TrayIcon.exe during reboot
After reboot I lunched browser and pointed it to http://remotehostname:8200/ngax/index.html now it does not open at all?
When I opened http://localhost:8200/ngax/index.html on the remote computer it opened Duplicati but with no scheduled job (No scheduled tasks - seems like new another instance of Duplicati).
I’m totally confused now what Duplicati.GUI.TrayIcon.exe role it plays since I have service running there. Closing it down it messes everything up :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Understandably, as the shift from using the tray icon server to service server is a bit hard to follow.

To summarize, you can have multiple instances of Duplicati servers (such as the service and one ore more Tray Icon servers) running at the same time, each with their own configurations and backup jobs.

I suspect this is what’s happening to you. If possible, we should try to work directly (or via TeamViewer, Remote Desktop, whatever) on the remote computer so we can make sure we know where everything is.

So on that computer if you find you get a Duplicati window at more than one of these URLs then you’ve got multiple server instances running:

What usually confuses people the most is how, unless adjusted by parameters, each server has it’s own config / backup jobs.

For security reasons the Duplicati defaults to not accepting connections from outside the computer on which it’s running, so once we we’ve got the on-machine stuff working the way we want, we can look at adding the parameters (such as --webservice-interface and --webservice-sslcertificatefile) to securely and remotely get to the configuration.


Note that in my testing I found that my Windows Firewall was silently blocking the service until I tried starting it at the command line at which point I got notified about it…
image

Ok, thanks for the explanation. I did not see any being blocked and nothing under firewall as being blocked. I do have Teamviewer. I’ll PM you.

Can you help me out with Teamviewer?

So…I also have multiple web servers activated on my machine (8200 and 8300). I want to use the tray app, but want it to also run as a service to give me access to backing up all user account files from one instance. I’ve installed and removed several times, it keeps picking up old configs from previous install attempts. How do I get rid of EVERYTHING so I can start fresh with just 1 install? Thanks.

That would depend on what operating system you are running.

But what do you mean by “just 1 install”? Unless you’re using something like portable mode there should only be a 1 install of Duplicati.

Most likely what you are running into is that the service starts and grabs port 8200 then when a user logs in their tray icon starts and, seeing that port 8200 is in use, grabs port 8300.

Each is running it’s own “backend server” with it’s own set of backups jobs. If you wan the tray icon to connect to the service “backend server” instead of starting its own, then consider this step of the Migrating from User to Service install on Windows topic: