What Déjà Dup Misses (it's big)

Applications
1

I had two nearly simultaneously failures of two Ubuntu machines, one of which was my fault. I rebuilt both machines and added the underlying structure: apache2, postgreSQL, PHP, Kate and pgAdmin. Déjà Dup couldn’t get through the Google docs authentication, so I downloaded the backup directory and restored everything in it. Great. With the help of DeepSeek, I rebuilt the postgres schema. Now where was the data? Google AI gave me the bad news, there was no data! For data to be saved, I would need to have done a data dump into the Home directory, easily done, but since I didn’t know this, not done.

My suggestion is that the developers add a search for MySQL or postgreSQL, then create a dump into the Home directory. This database backup is essential for any dhtml site as mine (was). I’m now completely dead in the water and plan to take up model airplane building. What’s the worst that can happen?

2

I’m going to assume this is real and not satire.

You can configure Deja Dup to back up whichever directories you specify. There is no need to dump your database to your home directory.

3

Thanks for the feedback, Frank. And I’m sorry you lost data - that’s extremely frustrating.

I’ll echo what Michael said and note that Deja Dup should be able to be pointed at your system folders where the database backups live (though the flatpak release might not be able to see them - it will warn about this if so).

We don’t generally cater to “system” level backups, where everything on disk is included. Deja Dup is more oriented towards personal data. Honestly, you might be looking for a more advanced backup solution than Deja Dup offers.

4

Well OK, my bad. How about a warning on the front page, like this:

:warning: STOP! If you are backing up a dhtml website, you MUST do a data dump into a listed directory first, such as the Home directory. :warning:

Just a few words. Take a minute to add. This would have saved me four months of work.