Re: [Duplicity-talk] Restoring a file deleted before the latest incremental

[edgar . soldin]

hey Anonymous,

comments inline

On 22.08.2023 00:00, duplicity--- via Duplicity-talk wrote:
> Hi all, I am executing a somewhat complex test plan which I will share if you 
> need it to give advice, but here is the short version first. I generally leave 
> my partitions mounted and have a partition by partition backup that runs 
> nightly.
>
> What happens if the following timeline occurs?
>
> 1) Full backup, some number of incrementals, each with a given file changed.
> 2) LUKS partition is inadvertently dismounted or system boots w/o me manually 
> mounting partitions.

generally not good if filesystems disappear willy-nilly. should that happen 
during backup i am not sure how duplicity would react. if it happens before you 
can test if your luks volume is mounted beforehand. see below.

> 3) Scheduled backup occurs on raw mount point.
> 4) LUKS partition is mounted on raw mount point.
> 5) Changed file is deleted.
> 6) Next scheduled backup is run.
>
> At this point the changed file from #1 is no longer in the catalogue because of 
> #3. I have tried restoring by timestamp previous to #2, but that older file 
> isn't available. I see two options:

use date/time strings and `list-current-files` to list backup contents, grep 
through the result for the file you are looking for. unfortunately listing 
cannot be limited to some path
e.g.

:~$ duplicity collection-status file:///tmp/dupbkp2
Last full backup date: Sat Jul 22 11:33:50 2023
Collection Status
-----------------
Connecting with backend: BackendWrapper
Archive dir: /home/ed/.cache/duplicity/171e404808f99be98d870571c9d6c6ec

Found 0 secondary backup chain(s).

Found primary backup chain with matching signature chain:
-------------------------
Chain start time: Sat Jul 22 11:33:50 2023
Chain end time: Tue Aug 22 15:45:52 2023
Number of contained backup sets: 2
Total number of contained volumes: 2
 Type of backup set:                            Time:      Num volumes:
                Full         Sat Jul 22 11:33:50 2023                 1
         Incremental         Tue Aug 22 15:45:52 2023                 1
-------------------------
No orphaned or incomplete backup sets found.

:~$ duplicity list-current-files --time=2023-07-22T11:33:50 file:///tmp/dupbkp2
Local and Remote metadata are synchronized, no sync needed.
Last full backup date: Sat Jul 22 11:33:50 2023
Sat Jul 22 11:29:48 2023 .
Sat Jul 22 11:29:53 2023 dirA
Sat Jul 22 11:30:17 2023 dirA/a
Sat Jul 22 11:30:00 2023 dirA/dirB
Sat Jul 22 11:30:10 2023 dirA/dirB/b


> 1) Run a backup when I mount the partition in #4, but since some of my 
> partitions are large and my jobs run 4-7 hours I would like to find another way.

not needed. simply check if your mounted file system is available/mounted. use 
dmsetup to test and skip the backup if it is not there.

> Also, #5 could happen prior to that backup completing.

well, changing the file system during backup is a bad idea in generell. backup 
snapshots or when nobody changes stuff.

> 2) I found the following post, but don't understand "... If you had the
> exact time of deletion and moved any incremental backups out of the way
> that had occurred since then, it would be possible to do it manually."
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/duplicity-talk/2008-05/msg00018.html 
> <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/duplicity-talk/2008-05/msg00018.html>
>
> I have the file timestamp of each of the edits in the incremental.
>
> How do I move the incremental in #3 "out of the way" so I can restore from 
> backups prior to backing up the raw mount point?

you really do not need to. using the `--time` parametr has the same effect.

good luck.. ede/duply.net