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DUPLICITY(1) | User Manuals | DUPLICITY(1) |
NAME¶
duplicity - Encrypted backup using rsync algorithmSYNOPSIS¶
duplicity [options] source_directory target_urlDESCRIPTION¶
Duplicity incrementally backs up files and directory by encrypting tar-format volumes with GnuPG and uploading them to a remote (or local) file server. Currently local, ftp, sftp/scp, rsync, WebDAV, WebDAVs, Google Docs, HSi and Amazon S3 backends are available. Because duplicity uses librsync, the incremental archives are space efficient and only record the parts of files that have changed since the last backup. Currently duplicity supports deleted files, full Unix permissions, directories, symbolic links, fifos, etc., but not hard links.EXAMPLES¶
Here is an example of a backup, using scp to back up /home/me to some_dir on the other.host machine:duplicity /home/me
scp://uid@other.host/some_dir
If the above is run repeatedly, the first will be a full backup, and subsequent
ones will be incremental. To force a full backup, use the full action:
duplicity full /home/me
scp://uid@other.host/some_dir
Now suppose we accidentally delete /home/me and want to restore it the way it
was at the time of last backup:
duplicity scp://uid@other.host/some_dir
/home/me
Duplicity enters restore mode because the URL comes before the local directory.
If we wanted to restore just the file "Mail/article" in /home/me as
it was three days ago into /home/me/restored_file:
duplicity -t 3D --file-to-restore Mail/article
scp://uid@other.host/some_dir /home/me/restored_file
The following command compares the files we backed up, so see what has changed
since then:
duplicity verify scp://uid@other.host/some_dir
/home/me
Finally, duplicity recognizes several include/exclude options. For instance, the
following will backup the root directory, but exclude /mnt, /tmp, and /proc:
duplicity --exclude /mnt --exclude /tmp
--exclude /proc / file:///usr/local/backup
Note that in this case the destination is the local directory /usr/local/backup.
The following will backup only the /home and /etc directories under root:
duplicity --include /home --include /etc
--exclude '**' / file:///usr/local/backup
Duplicity can also access a repository via ftp. If a user name is given, the
environment variable FTP_PASSWORD is read to determine the password:
FTP_PASSWORD=mypassword duplicity /local/dir
ftp://user@other.host/some_dir
ACTIONS¶
- cleanup
- Delete the extraneous duplicity files on the given backend.
Non-duplicity files, or files in complete data sets will not be deleted.
This should only be necessary after a duplicity session fails or is
aborted prematurely. Note that --force will be needed to delete the
files rather than just list them.
- collection-status
- Summarize the status of the backup repository by printing
the chains and sets found, and the number of volumes in each.
- full
- Indicate full backup. If this is set, perform full backup
even if signatures are available.
- incr
- If this is requested an incremental backup will be
performed. Duplicity will abort if old signatures cannot be found. The
default is to switch to full backup under these conditions.
- list-current-files
- Lists the files currently backed up in the archive. The
information will be extracted from the signature files, not the archive
data itself. Thus the whole archive does not have to be downloaded, but on
the other hand if the archive has been deleted or corrupted, this command
may not detect it.
- remove-older-than time
- Delete all backup sets older than the given time. Old
backup sets will not be deleted if backup sets newer than time
depend on them. See the TIME FORMATS section for more information.
Note, this action cannot be combined with backup or other actions, such as
cleanup. Note also that --force will be needed to delete the files
rather than just list them.
- remove-all-but-n-full count
- Delete all backups sets that are older than the count:th
last full backup (in other words, keep the last count full backups
and associated incremental sets). count must be larger than zero. A
value of 1 means that only the single most recent backup chain will be
kept. Note that --force will be needed to delete the files rather
than just list them.
- remove-all-inc-of-but-n-full count
- Delete incremental sets of all backups sets that are older
than the count:th last full backup (in other words, keep only old full
backups and not their increments). count must be larger than zero.
A value of 1 means that only the single most recent backup chain will be
kept intact. Note that --force will be needed to delete the files
rather than just list them.
- verify
- Enter verify mode instead of restore. If the
--file-to-restore option is given, restrict verify to that file or
directory. duplicity will exit with a non-zero error level if any files
are different. On verbosity level 4 or higher, log a message for each file
that has changed.
OPTIONS¶
The note regarding automatic cleanups above also applies to remove-all-but-n-full.- --allow-source-mismatch
- Do not abort on attempts to use the same archive dir or
remote backend to back up different directories. duplicity will tell you
if you need this switch.
- --archive-dir path
- The archive directory. NOTE: This option changed in
0.6.0. The archive directory is now necessary in order to manage
persistence for current and future enhancements. As such, this option is
now used only to change the location of the archive directory. The archive
directory should not be deleted, or duplicity will have to recreate
it from the remote repository (which may require decrypting the backup
contents).
- 1.
- neither specified (default)
~/.cache/duplicity/hash-of-url
- 2.
- --archive-dir=/arch, no --name
/arch/hash-of-url
- 3.
- no --archive-dir, --name=foo
~/.cache/duplicity/foo
- 4.
- --archive-dir=/arch, --name=foo
/arch/foo
- --asynchronous-upload
- (EXPERIMENTAL) Perform file uploads asynchronously in the
background, with respect to volume creation. This means that duplicity can
upload a volume while, at the same time, preparing the next volume for
upload. The intended end-result is a faster backup, because the local CPU
and your bandwidth can be more consistently utilized. Use of this option
implies additional need for disk space in the temporary storage location;
rather than needing to store only one volume at a time, enough storage
space is required to store two volumes.
- --dry-run
- Calculate what would be done, but do not perform any
backend actions
- --encrypt-key key-id
- When backing up, encrypt to the given public key, instead
of using symmetric (traditional) encryption. Can be specified multiple
times. The key-id can be given in any of the formats supported by GnuPG;
see gpg(1), section "HOW TO SPECIFY A USER ID" for
details.
- --encrypt-secret-keyring filename
- This option can only be used with --encrypt-key, and
changes the path to the secret keyring for the encrypt key to
filename This keyring is not used when creating a backup. If not
specified, the default secret keyring is used which is usually located at
.gnupg/secring.gpg
- --encrypt-sign-key key-id
- Convenience parameter. Same as --encrypt-key
key-id --sign-key key-id.
- --exclude shell_pattern
- Exclude the file or files matched by shell_pattern.
If a directory is matched, then files under that directory will also be
matched. See the FILE SELECTION section for more information.
- --exclude-device-files
- Exclude all device files. This can be useful for
security/permissions reasons or if rdiff-backup is not handling device
files correctly.
- --exclude-filelist filename
- Excludes the files listed in filename. See the
FILE SELECTION section for more information.
- --exclude-filelist-stdin
- Like --exclude-filelist, but the list of files will
be read from standard input. See the FILE SELECTION section for
more information.
- --exclude-globbing-filelist filename
- Like --exclude-filelist but each line of the
filelist will be interpreted according to the same rules as
--include and --exclude.
- --exclude-if-present filename
- Exclude directories if filename is present. This option
needs to come before any other include or exclude options.
- --exclude-other-filesystems
- Exclude files on file systems (identified by device number)
other than the file system the root of the source directory is on.
- --exclude-regexp regexp
- Exclude files matching the given regexp. Unlike the
--exclude option, this option does not match files in a directory
it matches. See the FILE SELECTION section for more information.
- --extra-clean
- When cleaning up, be more aggressive about saving space.
For example, this may delete signature files for old backup chains. See
the cleanup argument for more information.
- --file-to-restore path
- This option may be given in restore mode, causing only
path to be restored instead of the entire contents of the backup
archive. path should be given relative to the root of the directory
backed up.
- --full-if-older-than time
- Perform a full backup if an incremental backup is
requested, but the latest full backup in the collection is older than the
given time. See the TIME FORMATS section for more
information.
- --force
- Proceed even if data loss might result. Duplicity will let
the user know when this option is required.
- --ftp-passive
- Use passive (PASV) data connections. The default is to use
passive, but to fallback to regular if the passive connection fails or
times out.
- --ftp-regular
- Use regular (PORT) data connections.
- --gio
- Use the GIO backend and interpret any URLs as GIO would.
- --ignore-errors
- Try to ignore certain errors if they happen. This option is
only intended to allow the restoration of a backup in the face of certain
problems that would otherwise cause the backup to fail. It is not ever
recommended to use this option unless you have a situation where you are
trying to restore from backup and it is failing because of an issue which
you want duplicity to ignore. Even then, depending on the issue, this
option may not have an effect.
- --imap-mailbox option
- Allows you to specify a different mailbox. The default is
"INBOX". Other languages may require a different mailbox than
the default.
- --gpg-options options
- Allows you to pass options to gpg encryption. The
options list should be of the form "opt1=parm1
opt2=parm2" where the string is quoted and the only spaces allowed
are between options.
- --include shell_pattern
- Similar to --exclude but include matched files
instead. Unlike --exclude, this option will also match parent
directories of matched files (although not necessarily their contents).
See the FILE SELECTION section for more information.
- --include-filelist filename
- Like --exclude-filelist, but include the listed
files instead. See the FILE SELECTION section for more information.
- --include-filelist-stdin
- Like --include-filelist, but read the list of
included files from standard input.
- --include-globbing-filelist filename
- Like --include-filelist but each line of the
filelist will be interpreted according to the same rules as
--include and --exclude.
- --include-regexp regexp
- Include files matching the regular expression
regexp. Only files explicitly matched by regexp will be
included by this option. See the FILE SELECTION section for more
information.
- --log-fd number
- Write specially-formatted versions of output messages to
the specified file descriptor. The format used is designed to be easily
consumable by other programs.
- --log-file filename
- Write specially-formatted versions of output messages to
the specified file. The format used is designed to be easily consumable by
other programs.
- --name symbolicname
- Set the symbolic name of the backup being operated on. The
intent is to use a separate name for each logically distinct backup. For
example, someone may use "home_daily_s3" for the daily backup of
a home directory to Amazon S3. The structure of the name is up to the
user, it is only important that the names be distinct. The symbolic name
is currently only used to affect the expansion of --archive-dir ,
but may be used for additional features in the future. Users running more
than one distinct backup are encouraged to use this option.
- --no-encryption
- Do not use GnuPG to encrypt files on remote system. Instead
just write gzipped volumes.
- --no-print-statistics
- By default duplicity will print statistics about the
current session after a successful backup. This switch disables that
behavior.
- --null-separator
- Use nulls (\0) instead of newlines (\n) as line separators,
which may help when dealing with filenames containing newlines. This
affects the expected format of the files specified by the
--{include|exclude}-filelist[-stdin] switches as well as the format of the
directory statistics file.
- --numeric-owner
- On restore always use the numeric uid/gid from the archive
and not the archived user/group names, which is the default behaviour.
Recommended for restoring from live cds which might have the users with
identical names but different uids/gids.
- --num-retries number
- Number of retries to make on errors before giving up.
- --old-filenames
- Use the old filename format (incompatible with
Windows/Samba) rather than the new filename format.
- --rename orig new
- Treats the path orig in the backup as if it were the path new. Can be passed multiple times. An example:
duplicity restore --rename Documents/metal
Music/metal scp://uid@other.host/some_dir /home/me
- --rsync-options options
- Allows you to pass options to the rsync backend. The options list should be of the form "opt1=parm1 opt2=parm2" where the option string is quoted and the only spaces allowed are between options. The option string will be passed verbatim to rsync, after any internally generated option designating the remote port to use. Here is a possibly useful example:
duplicity
--rsync-options="--partial-dir=.rsync-partial" /home/me
scp://uid@other.host/some_dir
- --s3-european-buckets
- When using the Amazon S3 backend, create buckets in Europe
instead of the default (requires --s3-use-new-style ). Also see the
EUROPEAN S3 BUCKETS section.
- --s3-unencrypted-connection
- Don't use SSL for connections to S3.
- --s3-use-new-style
- When operating on Amazon S3 buckets, use new-style subdomain bucket addressing. This is now the preferred method to access Amazon S3, but is not backwards compatible if your bucket name contains upper-case characters or other characters that are not valid in a hostname.
- --scp-command command
- Deprecated and ignored. The sftp/scp backend does no longer
use an external scp client program.
- --sftp-command command
- Deprecated and ignored. The sftp/scp backend does no longer
use an external sftp client program.
- --sign-key key-id
- This option can be used when backing up, restoring or
verifying. When backing up, all backup files will be signed with keyid
key. When restoring, duplicity will signal an error if any remote
file is not signed with the given key-id. The key-id can be givein in any
of the formats supported by GnuPG; see gpg(1), section "HOW TO
SPECIFY A USER ID" for details. Should be specified only once because
currently only one signing key is supported. Last entry overrides
all other entries.
- --ssh-askpass
- Tells the sftp/scp backend to use FTP_PASSWORD from the
environment, or, if that is not present, to prompt the user for the remote
system password. This password is also used for ssh keys that are
passphrase-protected. Without this option the password is expected in the
url.
- --ssh-options options
- Allows you to pass options to the ssh/scp/sftp backend. The options list should be of the form "-oopt1=parm1 -oopt2=parm2" where the option string is quoted and the only spaces allowed are between options. Options must be given in the long option format described in ssh_config(5). The sftp/scp backend currently supports only one ssh option, IdentityFile like in this example:
duplicity
--ssh-options="-oIdentityFile=/my/backup/id" /home/me
sftp://uid@other.host/some_dir
- --short-filenames
- If this option is specified, the names of the files
duplicity writes will be shorter (about 30 chars) but less understandable.
This may be useful when backing up to MacOS or another OS or FS that
doesn't support long filenames.
- --tempdir directory
- Use this existing directory for duplicity temporary files
instead of the system default, which is usually the /tmp directory. This
option supersedes any environment variable.
- -ttime, --time time, --restore-time time
- Specify the time from which to restore or list files.
- --time-separator char
- Use char as the time separator in filenames instead
of colon (":").
- --timeout seconds
- Use seconds as the socket timeout value if duplicity
begins to timeout during network operations. The default is 30 seconds.
- --use-agent
- If this option is specified, then --use-agent is
passed to the GnuPG encryption process and it will try to connect to
gpg-agent before it asks for a passphrase for --encrypt-key
or --sign-key if needed.
- --use-scp
- If this option is specified, then the sftp/scp backend will
use the scp protocol rather than sftp for backend operations. The default
is to use sftp, because it does not suffer from shell quoting issues like
scp.
- --verbosity level, -vlevel
- Specify output verbosity level (log level). Named levels
and corresponding values are 0 Error, 2 Warning, 4 Notice (default), 8
Info, 9 Debug (noisiest).
- --version
- Print duplicity's version and quit.
- --volsize number
- Change the volume size to number Mb. Default is
25Mb.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES¶
- TMPDIR, TEMP, TMP
- In decreasing order of importance, specifies the directory to use for temporary files (inherited from Python's tempfile module).
- FTP_PASSWORD
- Supported by most backends which are password capable. More secure than setting it in the backend url (which might be readable in the operating systems process listing to other users on the same machine).
- PASSPHRASE
- This passphrase is passed to GnuPG. If this is not set, the user will be prompted for the passphrase.
- SIGN_PASSPHRASE
- The passphrase to be used for --sign-key , if
SIGN_PASSPHRASE is not set but PASSPHRASE is set, the latter will be used.
Otherwise, if no passphrase is available, the user will be prompted for
it.
URL FORMAT¶
Duplicity tries to maintain a standard URL format as much as possible. The generic format for a URL is: It is not recommended to expose the password on the command line since it could be revealed to anyone with permissions to do process listings, however, it is permitted. Consider setting the environment variable FTP_PASSWORD instead, which is supported by most, but not all backends. Regardless of its name it can be used with other backends. In protocols that support it, the path may be preceded by a single slash, '/path', to represent a relative path to the target home directory, or preceded by a double slash, '//path', to represent an absolute filesystem path. Formats of each of the URL schemes follow:cf+http://container_name
file:///some_dir
ftp[s]://user[:password]@other.host[:port]/some_dir
hsi://user[:password]@other.host/some_dir
imap[s]://user[:password]@host.com[/from_address_prefix]
see also A NOTE ON IMAP
using rsync daemon
rsync://user[:password]@host.com[:port]::[/]module/some_dir
using rsync over ssh (only key auth)
rsync://user@host.com[:port]/relative_path
rsync://user@host.com[:port]//absolute_path
s3://host/bucket_name[/prefix]
s3+http://bucket_name[/prefix]
see also A NOTE ON EUROPEAN S3 BUCKETS
Ubuntu One
u1://host/volume_path
u1+http://volume_path
see also A NOTE ON UBUNTU ONE
scp://.. or ssh://.. are synonymous with
sftp://user[:password]@other.host[:port]/[/]some_dir
see also --use-scp
tahoe://alias/directory
webdav[s]://user[:password]@other.host/some_dir
gdocs://user[:password]@other.host/some_dir
TIME FORMATS¶
duplicity uses time strings in two places. Firstly, many of the files duplicity creates will have the time in their filenames in the w3 datetime format as described in a w3 note at http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime. Basically they look like "2001-07-15T04:09:38-07:00", which means what it looks like. The "-07:00" section means the time zone is 7 hours behind UTC. Secondly, the -t, --time, and --restore-time options take a time string, which can be given in any of several formats:- 1.
- the string "now" (refers to the current time)
- 2.
- a sequences of digits, like "123456890" (indicating the time in seconds after the epoch)
- 3.
- A string like "2002-01-25T07:00:00+02:00" in datetime format
- 4.
- An interval, which is a number followed by one of the characters s, m, h, D, W, M, or Y (indicating seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years respectively), or a series of such pairs. In this case the string refers to the time that preceded the current time by the length of the interval. For instance, "1h78m" indicates the time that was one hour and 78 minutes ago. The calendar here is unsophisticated: a month is always 30 days, a year is always 365 days, and a day is always 86400 seconds.
- 5.
- A date format of the form YYYY/MM/DD, YYYY-MM-DD,
MM/DD/YYYY, or MM-DD-YYYY, which indicates midnight on the day in
question, relative to the current time zone settings. For instance,
"2002/3/5", "03-05-2002", and "2002-3-05"
all mean March 5th, 2002.
FILE SELECTION¶
duplicity accepts the same file selection options rdiff-backup does, including --exclude, --exclude-filelist-stdin, etc.duplicity --include /usr --exclude /usr /usr
scp://user@host/backup
is exactly the same as
duplicity /usr scp://user@host/backup
because the include and exclude directives match exactly the same files, and the
--include comes first, giving it precedence. Similarly,
duplicity --include /usr/local/bin --exclude
/usr/local /usr scp://user@host/backup
would backup the /usr/local/bin directory (and its contents), but not
/usr/local/doc.
- 1.
- pattern can be expanded into the file's filename, or
- 2.
- the file is inside a directory matched by the option.
- 1.
- pattern can be expanded into the file's filename,
- 2.
- the file is inside a directory matched by the option, or
- 3.
- the file is a directory which contains a file matched by the option.
--exclude /usr/local
matches /usr/local, /usr/local/lib, and /usr/local/lib/netscape. It is the same
as --exclude /usr/local --exclude '/usr/local/**'.
--include /usr/local
specifies that /usr, /usr/local, /usr/local/lib, and /usr/local/lib/netscape
(but not /usr/doc) all be backed up. Thus you don't have to worry about
including parent directories to make sure that included subdirectories have
somewhere to go. Finally,
--include
ignorecase:'/usr/[a-z0-9]foo/*/**.py'
would match a file like /usR/5fOO/hello/there/world.py. If it did match
anything, it would also match /usr. If there is no existing file that the
given pattern can be expanded into, the option will not match /usr.
- 1.
- Globbing patterns like *, **, ?, and
[...] are not expanded.
- 2.
- Include patterns do not match files in a directory that is
included. So /usr/local in an include file will not match /usr/local/doc.
- 3.
- Lines starting with "+ " are interpreted as
include directives, even if found in a filelist referenced by
--exclude-filelist. Similarly, lines starting with "- "
exclude files even if they are found within an include filelist.
/usr/local
- /usr/local/doc
/usr/local/bin
+ /var
- /var
then "--include-filelist list.txt" would include /usr, /usr/local, and
/usr/local/bin. It would exclude /usr/local/doc, /usr/local/doc/python, etc.
It neither excludes nor includes /usr/local/man, leaving the fate of this
directory to the next specification condition. Finally, it is undefined what
happens with /var. A single file list should not contain conflicting file
specifications.
dir/foo
+ dir/bar
- **
Then "--include-globbing-filelist globbing-list.txt" would be exactly
the same as specifying "--include dir/foo --include dir/bar --exclude
**" on the command line.
--include '[0-9]{7}(?!foo)'
matches any files whose full pathnames contain 7 consecutive digits which aren't
followed by 'foo'. However, it wouldn't match /home even if /home/ben/1234567
existed.
A NOTE ON EUROPEAN S3 BUCKETS¶
Amazon S3 provides the ability to choose the location of a bucket upon its creation. The purpose is to enable the user to choose a location which is better located network topologically relative to the user, because it may allow for faster data transfers. duplicity will create a new bucket the first time a bucket access is attempted. At this point, the bucket will be created in Europe if --s3-european-buckets was given. For reasons having to do with how the Amazon S3 service works, this also requires the use of the --s3-use-new-style option. This option turns on subdomain based bucket addressing in S3. The details are beyond the scope of this man page, but it is important to know that your bucket must not contain upper case letters or any other characters that are not valid parts of a hostname. Consequently, for reasons of backwards compatibility, use of subdomain based bucket addressing is not enabled by default. Note that you will need to use --s3-use-new-style for all operations on European buckets; not just upon initial creation. You only need to use --s3-european-buckets upon initial creation, but you may may use it at all times for consistency. Further note that when creating a new European bucket, it can take a while before the bucket is fully accessible. At the time of this writing it is unclear to what extent this is an expected feature of Amazon S3, but in practice you may experience timeouts, socket errors or HTTP errors when trying to upload files to your newly created bucket. Give it a few minutes and the bucket should function normally.A NOTE ON IMAP¶
An IMAP account can be used as a target for the upload. The userid may be specified and the password will be requested. The from_address_prefix may be specified (and probably should be). The text will be used as the "From" address in the IMAP server. Then on a restore (or list) command the from_address_prefix will distinguish between different backups.A NOTE ON UBUNTU ONE¶
Connecting to Ubuntu One requires that you be running duplicity inside of an X session so that you can be prompted for your credentials if necessary by the Ubuntu One session daemon. See https://one.ubuntu.com/ for more information about Ubuntu One.A NOTE ON SYMMETRIC ENCRYPTION AND SIGNING¶
Signing and symmetrically encrypt at the same time with the gpg binary on the command line, as used within duplicity, is a specifically challenging issue. Tests showed that the following combinations proved working. 1. Setup gpg-agent properly. Use the option --use-agent and enter both passphrases (symmetric and sign key) in the gpg-agent's dialog. 2. Use a PASSPHRASE for symmetric encryption of your choice but the signing key has an empty passphrase. 3. The used PASSPHRASE for symmetric encryption and the passphrase of the signing key are identical.KNOWN ISSUES / BUGS¶
Hard links currently unsupported (they will be treated as non-linked regular files).OPERATION AND DATA FORMATS¶
This section describes duplicity's basic operation and the format of its data files. It should not necessary to read this section to use duplicity.AUTHOR¶
Original Author - Ben Escoto <bescoto@stanford.edu>SEE ALSO¶
rdiffdir(1), python(1), rdiff(1), rdiff-backup(1).February 29, 2012 | Version 0.6.18 |