Mystery mounts after using Deja-Dup

General Help
#1

I used Deja-Dup for the first time ever three days ago. After the setup process, it ran its initial backup, then the next day ran its first of what is supposed to be a weekly process. After Deja-Dup ran, I noticed two strange icons on my desktop. (They are folders with left and right arrows.) When I right-click on one, it gives me the standard choices as well as an "Unmount" option.

While these icons appear on my desktop, the are not in my ~/Desktop directory. mount shows nothing. Does anyone know where these files/mount points actually live? What is mounted? How are they mounted? Can I safely dismount them? Can they be unmounted from the command line? Will they appear again after each run of Deja-Dup?

I asked these questions on the Deja-Dup forum several days ago. Other than 40 some views, no one has posted anything ... so I thought I'd ask here.

#2

Can you post a screenshot of the icons?

#3

Screenshot from 2021-03-14 13-38-11

As I mentioned, if there's a file (of some kind) behind these two folders, they are not in ~/Desktop.

#4

When I open Files (Nautilus), it shows these to "folders" as items in the side bar; they appear to be some kind of intern-to-GNOME shortcuts. One is smb://... and the other is sftp://...

It's confusing, I suppose, because I don't understand how these two came to be. Yes; I know Deja-Dup created them, and I know they're related to the two backups I ran, but I don't know how or why they persist.

#5

What does a folder with a Symlink Emblem on it look like with your icon set? Symlinked files are a redirect icon, pointing to something that is located elsewhere. This is true for all symlinks, so it makes sense that your desktop folder is empty.

smb (server message block) and sftp (server file transfer protocol) tell me that you have either a home network, backup system or file sharing service set up - I had to look up what Drobo5n is:

It is a device used for such purposes as above.

So... Really... You should know a lot more about all this than any of us would. Unless you have never owned and never set up a Drobo device; or never setup a file sharing system...
These are very specific. It appears to me that these are symlinks directing to a mounted Drobo 5n device set up by you for either backing up data or as a home network.
I am not currently running Zorin OS, so I also do not have an installed Deja Dup. I never used Deja Dup, anyway, as I find it cumbersome and slow and too automated- I back up in a different way that works for me. I cannot run Deja Dup to check and test this.
But... I do recall that when you run deja dup, you select what directories you wish to back up, then you select a Storage Location. As I recall, it defaults to Google Drive, but is a drop down menu and you can select from that menu your Backup Storage Location. Given the nature of Drobo, it seems very logical to me that if Deja Dup is related to those icons on desktop showing Mounted Volumes, that Drobo was chosen as the storage location on that drop down menu- thereby mounting it for access to back up and to restore a recovery (perhaps under network server).

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#6

I don't pretend to know how Déjà-Dup does its magic but I think what's going on is this: I never access an SMB share using smbclient; I always mount -t cifs ... and go from there. It seems that when you access a remote share via Files (Nautilus specifically), you use a "mount-like" URL - e.g. smb://host/share - but behind the scenes, Nautilus never actually commits to a mount; it stores the URL internally and uses smblicent for all operations. This makes the experience [in Nautilus] very FTP/FileZilla-esque. I'm guessing that Déjà-Dup, too, uses smbclient to perform its file transfers when backing up to a remote (NAS) share. Perhaps Nautilus picks up on this activity and remembers the share URLs and displays them as "mounts."

I've come to this conclusion after a recent session with Nautilus. I needed to transfer files from the desktop of my dying computer to my "new" workhorse. In Nautilus, I connected to the remote machine using an smb:// ... URL. Nautilus connected and added the share as a "mount point" on the sidebar. While the file manager was loading the contents of the share, I quickly dropped to the command line and ... no mount!

So ... these "mystery icons" are not real mounts nor are they some kind of shortcut file stored to the filesystem; instead, they are data internal to Nautilus for its own purposes. The "unmount/eject" icon in Nautilus' sidebar is really a "forget this URL" action.

I'm satisfied. Thank you for your help!!

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#7

This makes a great deal of sense. Especially as Duplicity (Deja Dup is the front end for Duplicity) and Nautilus share some origins.