I did a backup to a second drive before I did a clean install.
The clean install went fine but something happened to my backup files on my second drive.
I have the following dirs data,index,keys,locks,snapshots and a config file.
When I look in the dirs there are many files with very long random names but none seem to have a file extension. Property only shows Binary (application/octet-stream).
I have tried to open a few of the files by right click and open with backup and nothing.
I think it has something to do with none of the files have extinctions, I just don’t know.
Behind the scenes, Deja Dup uses Restic, which creates backup repositories that look like that.
It sounds like you were hoping the original files would be in the backup folder directly? Which is understandable. But the files are actually stored in a special Restic format, which can makes it easier to encrypt them and do deduplication on file chunks, and incremental backups, etc.
If you want to interact with the folder / restore files from it, you can use Deja Dup’s restore interface or use Restic directly on the command line. Does that work?
Thanks for the fast reply.
I have tried to restore the files one by one and even a dir but I keep getting the error ‘no backup files found’. This is why I was thinking about the file ext as when I right click linux does not even know what app to use for the file.
Thanks Again,
Oh interesting so you tried using Deja Dup to restore, but it didn’t think there was a backup there? Can you screenshot the message just so I understand?
Can you also paste the info from the About menu’s debugging/troubleshooting page? That has some useful meta info that might help me help you.
I’m guessing either the storage location isn’t pointing at the right place… or Deja Dup is confused for some reason. Are you comfortable with the command line? You could try using Restic directly against the storage location.
Thanks for trying to help me but it might be a lost cause (I Hope Not).
I have done some looking around in the dir that we talked about before.
NONE of the files have a .gz at the end like I think they should.
I renamed a few files with the .gz and backup just spins, stops and never really opens.
In the data dir I have 256 folders with a large amount of files inside them.
In the index dir there are 7 files.
Keys one file.
Locks no files.
Snapshots 6 files.
I would like to recover as many of these files even if I can’t get all of them.
Please undo those filename changes - adding .gz to files there will break stuff. That folder is full of arcane files. You can read more about the format in the restic documentation.
Try running restic directly against that folder. Something like: restic -r path/to/folder snapshots (add --insecure-no-password if you didn’t use a password)
That command will just list the snapshots (one for each backup you’ve made with Deja Dup)
But other commands can help restore files. To restore everything, run: restic -r path/to/folder --insecure-no-password restore latest --target /tmp/restore - for more selective restoring, read their docs and/or pass --help
I’m still a little unclear on exactly what’s happening with Deja Dup in this situation - but that’s less important than getting your data back. Once you do, I’m curious for some more debug info. What version of Deja Dup are you using?
Thank You for your help, I restored my files.
I’m still not sure what happened.
You put me on the right trail about ‘restic’ which was NOT installed on my computer.
So, I went ahead and installed it but, still no luck.
Next I uninstalled your program (which I think was an old version).
Then I installed the flatpack most recent version of your program and it worked.
So thanks again for your help.
I was about to give up.
Ah… yay I’m glad your files are safe! Is this a likely sequence of events?
you used a more recent version of Deja Dup to make the backup (we have switched to using Restic by default instead of duplicity in the past few releases)
On the restore machine, you had only an older version of Deja Dup that doesn’t understand Restic files - who is why it said no backup files found
So once you installed the latest version again (one that understands Restic files), things worked