After switching from the Beta to the Experimental channel, backups and restores work, but there is some weird behaviour.
If I point the web browser to localhost I can see the Smart Retention feature, but choosing it and saving doesn’t apply it. (If I revisit the same page, the setting is unchanged.) If I point the web browser to 127.0.0.1, I don’t see an option for Smart Retention at all.
I am running Duplicati as a service on this machine (a server). It seems like I’ve managed to run a couple of copies of the web interface. But I should at least be able to get the retention feature to apply on the web interface on localhost, no?
I’ve tried restarting the Duplicati service as well.
Bah! I had started a copy of the Duplicati web interface from the desktop, in addition to the Duplicati service.
Once the desktop copy of Duplicati was closed things seem better.
Yeah…that’s almost a common enough mistake to cause a rewrite of that functionality. But there’s so much cooler stuff on the way it just hasn’t gotten very high on the list yet. 
Should we flag this topic as Solved with your last post?
I have to concur that the way running a service works right now is not quite idiot proof. But that is a very quiet criticism.
Yes, my problem is solved.
Yeah… it was designed that way on purpose, but I think the target user base is changing enough that some discussions have already happened about “flipping” the functionality to automatically attach to any existing server and require a parameter to NOT do so, rather than the current opposite functionality.
The way it currently works is probably better for multi-user environments.