After warnings to backup precious files before trying to resize partitions, I seem to be progressing toward that goal at a crawl. Since Deja Dup shows Google Drive as a storage option, I tried that. System monitor shows data being uploaded (no progress bar in Dup, tsk tsk), up to a point. At 1.1 GB things came to a halt on the monitor and a popup said “Backup failed - unable to authenticate” [or somesuch]. But in Chromium my Gdrive acct does indeed show 16 uploads @25MB, e.g. “Created 3:42 PM with GNOME”… “duplicity-full.20200831T161020Z.vol16.difftar.gpg”… Location: Home Backup [folder I named earlier]. A web query tells me Google Drive syncing isn’t Linux compatible - but as long as the files can be retrieved, who cares? Anyway, my main question here is “Do I have a successful backup or what?” Is Deja Dup giving false alarms? Should I be using Chrome, not Chromium (both operative)? Thanks in advance for any knowledgeable tips.
If they show in your Google Drive, then they are there. Possible that they may be corrupted…
I stopped using DejaDup for that purpose.
It’s faster, more organized and easier to compress your home folders as a tar.gz and upload them to your storage.
Make sure to back up your .profile, and other hidden docs, your .config, .local and other hidden software folders you may use like gimp-2.8, .mozilla and so on.
Then do your visible directories like Pictures, Downloads, Videos…
It may seem slower or more tedious, but it is a lot faster to do. It affords you a LOT more control and it avoids backing up unnecessary things.
It also allows you to update individual back ups as needed (I do it daily sometimes) by simply dragging and dropping a change or new item into the compressed tar.gz in your storage. For example, if I change a background image in my themes, I then drag and drop it to that path in the tar.gz and replace the old, no decompression needed, no new back up needed. And it helps me to ensure everything is always backed up since maintaining back ups is very fast and easy.
I hope this helps.
I just use the GNOME integration for Google accouts to access my Google Drive for backups and the simple access to my cloud storage.
I just want to add the comment that if Deja Dup is indeed considered the graphical user interface for Duplicity, it is one pathetic GUI. There is no progress bar. You can't even see that a backup is actually happening, nor any details. Even the Software Updater app offers that. Hard to believe this is the best anyone can do.
This is interesting as the CLI function Duplicity contains a progress bar:
It seems very odd to me that this would not be included in Deja Dup.
Interesting indeed, and not seen here. Not sure why @cliffe is different.
I have just used Back Up (DejaDup) myself, albeit a manual backup (not scheduled) to a external drive and the backup progress bar is clearly visible from the UI (see screenshot below).
Also visible is an option to show "Details" of files being backed up.
Thanks guys. Could be due to putting it on auto-backup (to Google Drive). I got a gnome popup that one just started so I'll let it run and revert manual after it's done. Will add a note here if I see the progress bar and details.
new on my Google Drive, Fri Jun 18 2021:
(Deja Dup was only instructed to backup /home)
Jun 17
duplicity-inc.20210514T125044Z.to.20210617T232040Z.vol1.difftar.gz
3 items [folders]: diff, multivol_snapshot, snapshot
Jun 17
ditto vol 2-22, each with 2 items [no diff folders]
Jun 18
1:49pm
duplicity-inc.20210514T125044Z.to.20210617T232040Z.vol23.difftar.gz
2 items
1:51pm - 2:41pm
ditto vols 24-38
all 38 files @ 25MB [=950MB?]
snapshot contents appear repetitive
I inspected the above Gdrive contents only AFTER the backup had ended. How did I know it ended? This is how: >>
While the final post in the above link suggests selecting certain folders, I see a 401 error with Invalid cred- Which tells me that it is a Google Drive issue.
Now we're talking. And here I thought Google could never screw up! How interesting. Guess I'll have to embrace manual backups like you first suggested.
I prefer my method as it backs up only what I actually need and no more.
However, I wonder if Google Drive troubleshooting may help you if your preferred method is Deja Dup:
Figure D seems to be your starting point.
Thanks, I'll give it a shot. Actually I just sent that launchpad link to Google Drive's feedback unit. Ongoing since 2017? Tsk, tsk!
Ah, too bad. Fig. D was dealt with long ago and isn't an issue. But I need to look through the rest of the article.