As the others have noted, such a feature is not currently there.
There is support for handing over the list of changed/deleted paths to avoid the scanning of the disk, but there is not yet a monitor that produces this list.
For the problem with duration, there is really not much you can do if the backup takes longer than the interval (the 15min mentioned).
Is there any plan to implement this feature or is it completely on back burner?
Not sure, we have not made a real road-map yet.
I’m also a CrashPlan user, and I’m still desperately looking for a solution that will do real-time back-ups without scanning my entire file system. To give you an idea: my laptop has roughly 500k files in the backup set, any one of which may be modified. Using CrashPlan, I had real-time backup at 15’ intervals. Using Duplicati, a scan now takes 30’, and a lot of CPU, forcing me to a single backup per day.
I would be happy to implement the real-time support (using the FileSystemWatcher class) on Windows for Duplicati, but would need some help how to interface this with Duplicati. Could you give me some overview of the relevant interfaces?
Sounds awesome!
The implementation is based on the two options --changed-files and --deleted-files options. Using the commandline, you can set these two to a path separated list (using ; on Windows and : on others). Once they are set, the file scanner is not used, and it only scans the --changed-files and removes the --deleted-files.
If you are using USN, it should be possible to store the previous USN time-stamp and then query USN to give the change lists. This will work even if you restart Duplicati in the meantime.
For the FileWatcher approach, you have the problem that it is not guaranteed to keep running, so you need to handle the case where it is started (and thus cannot help you and must run a full scan). If it has been running since the last backup, you can use the list and avoid the scan.
The list may be really large (many files are changed), so perhaps you need something like a database to store the filenames. It is also possible that we need to re-design the way we pass the list of filenames to avoid storing them in-memory( i.e. using a file or similar).
I am not sure how to do this the best, but perhaps it would make sense to start the FileWatcher when running a backup. This first run will then use the scan, but keep the FileWatcher running, such that the next backup is using the data from the FileWatcher.
If this is the “right way”, I think you can inject this into the “Runner.cs” class in the Duplicati.Server project:
Let me know if you have any questions.
Ken,
Thanks for the introduction. I agree that running the FileSystemWatcher in a separate process, and then passing the changed / deleted file on the command line (or using some other mechanism, such as IPC) is risky.
I’d rather favour the approach of an in-process task, with an initial scan and then updating the file list using the watcher thread.
I will look into this over the next weeks.
Buy if you do it this way you will
Understand what I try to say? 
I’m really looking forward to this real-time backup thing.
This part is very useful. I was wondering how this worked. I still don’t completely understand how to use it though. I’ve searched the forum for information about --changed-files, but could only find this topic discussion about it so far.
Are there any ideas for other file systems that Duplicati can take advantage of?
I believe --changed-files is a “;” (Windows) or “:” (non-Windows) separated list of file paths previously determined to have been changed. Similarly, --deleted-files is a list of file paths previously determined to have been deleted.
My guess would be that a third party “file watcher” tool can be monitoring the file system between Duplicati runs, then when Duplicati starts a backup, a --run-script-before script queries the file-watcher to provide a list of changed and deleted files which are then passed into Duplicati likely using DUPLICATI__changed_files and DUPLICATI__deleted_files environment variables.
Here are the descriptions of the two file list parameters as of version 2.0.2.12_canary.
Duplicati.CommandLine.exe help changed-files
--changed-files (Path): List of files to examine for changes
This option can be used to limit the scan to only files that are known to
have changed. This is usually only activated in combination with a
filesystem watcher that keeps track of file changes.
Duplicati.CommandLine.exe help deleted-files
--deleted-files (Path): List of deleted files
This option can be used to supply a list of deleted files. This option
will be ignored unless the option --changed-files is also set.
I wish all of this usage information was easily accessible in one place.
Well, technically it (like the above) IS all in one place - it just happens to be the command-line do isn’t searchable.
Hang in there - you might see a topic about it soon and there is some wonderful work on an actual manual going on!
Can I be able to get that information using macOS or Linux?
Yep. Just run Duplicati.CommandLine.exe help.
I’ve added a Display Duplicati command line help #howto topic that includes the output of the advanced option descriptions for 2.0.2.1 beta.
It’s not ALL the information, but it’s a decent chunk. I’m hoping to get more added.
I came across this and found it interesting as I, too, am coming from CrashPlan and working on migrating my current setup. I’ve been trying to dig further into what feature parity I might need to work out.
Anyway, the original CrashPlan link (Real-Time Backup For Network-Attached Storage - CrashPlan Support) shed a little light on how they are implementing it; seeming to hook into corresponding OS filesystem hooks to get notified of changes (Spotlight on Mac, NTFS on Windows, a kernel module on linux).
On the Windows side some more digging let me to the “NTFS Change Journal” (Change Journals (Windows))… at this point I’m not quite clear on it’s relation to a FileSystemWatcher, but it sounds like it might be more lower level? I wonder if that’s how others are accomplishing things like real-time backup implementations. This link describes an interesting process around that, too.
Makes me want to read up on it more and see if there’d be some way to integrate some of those ideas, at least on the Windows side, to get a more real-time backup solution…
Sounds like a great way to contribute!
There are two ways to get the “continuous backup”.
The first is to use the Windows USN to list files and folders.
I implemented it for Duplicati 1.3.x, but some users reported missing files, so I disabled it. If we can get it fixed, it is really fast, as Windows can return a list of changed files/folders by querying the NTFS metadata in one go. I recall it as throwing paths out at thousands/second.
The other approach is to use the FileSystemWatcher which works on all OS’es. With a watcher it is possible to record what files and folders have changed. The watcher should record from the time the previous backup starts, to make sure it catches files changed during the backup as well.
As mentioned above, Duplicati has the options --changed-files and --deleted-files, which will bypass the normal directory scanning approach and just look at the files supplied through these options. We may need to do something more clever than sending a huge list of paths in, but the basic functionality is there.
Interesting! I might check out the 1.3 source just to see how it was doing it…maybe there’s something to salvage. Do you have a pointer to where in the source tree that work was being done? Thanks!