DUPLICITY - Encrypted incremental backup to local or remote storage. - man - [phpMan]

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⚡ TLDR: DUPLICITY (tldr-pages)

Create incremental, compressed, encrypted, and versioned backups.

Back up a directory via FTPS to a remote machine, encrypting it with a password
FTP_PASSWORD={{ftp_login_password}} PASSPHRASE={{encryption_password}} duplicity {{path/to/source_directory}} {{ftps://user@hostname/path/to/target_directory}}/
Back up a directory to Amazon S3, doing a full backup every month
duplicity --full-if-older-than {{1M}} s3://{{bucket_name[/prefix}}
Delete versions older than 1 year from a backup stored on a WebDAV share
FTP_PASSWORD={{webdav_login_password}} duplicity remove-older-than {{1Y}} --force {{webdav[s]://user@hostname[:port]/some_directory}}
List the available backups
duplicity collection-status "file://{{absolute/path/to/backup_directory}}"
List the files in a backup stored on a remote machine, via SSH
duplicity list-current-files {{-t|--time}} {{YYYY-MM-DD}} scp://{{user@hostname}}/{{path/to/backup_directory}}
Restore a subdirectory from a GnuPG-encrypted local backup to a given location
PASSPHRASE={{gpg_key_password}} duplicity restore --encrypt-key {{gpg_key_id}} --path-to-restore {{path/to/restore_directory}} file://{{absolute/path/to/backup_directory}} {{path/to/directory_to_restore_to}}

DUPLICITY(1) User Manuals DUPLICITY(1)

NAME
duplicity - Encrypted incremental backup to local or remote storage.

SYNOPSIS
For detailed descriptions for each action see chapter ACTIONS.

duplicity [backup|full|incremental] [options] source_directory target_url

duplicity verify [options] [--compare-data] [--path-to-restore <relpath>] [--time time]
source_url target_directory

duplicity collection-status [options] [--file-changed <relpath>] [--show-changes-in-set
<index>] [--jsonstat]] target_url

duplicity list-current-files [options] [--time time] target_url

duplicity [restore] [options] [--path-to-restore <relpath>] [--time time] source_url
target_directory

duplicity remove-older-than <time> [options] [--force] target_url

duplicity remove-all-but-n-full <count> [options] [--force] target_url

duplicity remove-all-inc-of-but-n-full <count> [options] [--force] target_url

duplicity cleanup [options] [--force] target_url

DESCRIPTION
Duplicity incrementally backs up files and folders into tar-format volumes encrypted with
GnuPG and places them to a remote (or local) storage backend. See chapter URL FORMAT for a
list of all supported backends and how to address them. Because duplicity uses librsync,
incremental backups 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,
uid/gid, directories, symbolic links, fifos, etc., but not hard links.

If you are backing up the root directory /, remember to --exclude /proc, or else duplicity
will probably crash on the weird stuff in there.

EXAMPLES
Here is an example of a backup, using sftp to back up /home/me to some_dir on the other.host
machine:

duplicity /home/me sftp://uid AT 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 sftp://uid AT other.host/some_dir

or enforcing a full every other time via --full-if-older-than <time> , e.g. a full every
month:

duplicity --full-if-older-than 1M /home/me sftp://uid AT 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 sftp://uid AT 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 --path-to-restore Mail/article sftp://uid AT other.host/some_dir
/home/me/restored_file

The following action compares the latest backup with the current files:

duplicity verify sftp://uid AT 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 AT other.host/some_dir

ACTIONS
Duplicity uses actions, which can be given in long or in short form and finetuned with
options.
The actions 'backup' or 'restore' can be implied from the order local path and remote url are
given. Other actions need to be given explicitly. For the rare case that the local path may
be a valid duplicity action name you may append a '/' to the local path name so it can no
longer be mistaken for an action.

NOTE: The following explanations explain some but not all options that can be used in
connection with that action. Consult the OPTIONS section for more detailed descriptions.

backup, bu <folder> <url>
Perform a backup. Duplicity automatically performs an incremental backup if old
signatures can be found. Else a new backup chain is started.

full, fb <folder> <url>
Perform a full backup. A new backup chain is started even if signatures are available
for an incremental backup.

incremental, ib <folder> <url>
If this is requested an incremental backup will be performed. Duplicity will abort if
no old signatures can be found.

verify, vb [--compare-data] [--time <time>] [--path-to-restore <rel_path>] <url> <local_path>
Verify tests the integrity of the backup archives at the remote location by
downloading each file and checking both that it can restore the archive and that the
restored file matches the signature of that file stored in the backup, i.e. compares
the archived file with its hash value from archival time. Verify does not actually
restore and will not overwrite any local files. Duplicity will exit with a non-zero
error level if any files do not match the signature stored in the archive for that
file. On verbosity level 4 or higher, it will log a message for each file that differs
from the stored signature. Files must be downloaded to the local machine in order to
compare them. Verify does not compare the backed-up version of the file to the
current local copy of the files unless the --compare-data option is used (see below).
The --path-to-restore option restricts verify to that file or folder. The --time
option allows one to select a backup to verify. The --compare-data option enables
data comparison (see below).

collection-status, st [--file-changed <relpath>] [--show-changes-in-set <index>] <url>
Summarize the status of the backup repository by printing the chains and sets found,
and the number of volumes in each.
The --file-changed option summarizes the changes to the file (in the most recent
backup chain). The --show-changes-in-set option summarizes all the file changes in
the index:th backup set (where index 0 means the latest set, 1 means the next to
latest, etc.). --jsonstat prints the changes in json format and statistics from the
jsonstat files if the backups were created with --jsonstat. If <index> is set to -1
statistics for the whole backup chain printed

list-current-files, ls [--time <time>] <url>
Lists the files contained in the most current backup or backup at time. 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 action will not detect it.

restore, rb [--path-to-restore <relpath>] [--time <time>] <url> <target_folder>
You can restore the full monty or selected folders/files from a specific time. Use
the relative path as it is printed by list-current-files. Usually not needed as
duplicity enters restore mode when it detects that the URL comes before the local
folder.

remove-older-than, ro <time> [--force] <url>
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 instead of just
listing them.

remove-all-but-n-full, ra <count> [--force] <url>
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 instead of just
listing them.

remove-all-inc-of-but-n-full, ri <count> [--force] <url>
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
instead of just listing them.

cleanup, cl [--force] <url>
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 instead of just listing them.

OPTIONS
--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).

When backing up or restoring, this option specifies that the local archive directory
is to be created in path. If the archive directory is not specified, the default will
be to create the archive directory in ~/.cache/duplicity/.

The archive directory can be shared between backups to multiple targets, because a
subdirectory of the archive dir is used for individual backups (see --name ).

The combination of archive directory and backup name must be unique in order to
separate the data of different backups.

The interaction between the --archive-dir and the --name options allows for four
possible combinations for the location of the archive dir:

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.

--azure-blob-tier
Standard storage tier used for backup files (Hot|Cool|Archive).

--azure-max-single-put-size
Specify the number of the largest supported upload size where the Azure library makes
only one put call. If the content size is known and below this value the Azure library
will only perform one put request to upload one block. The number is expected to be
in bytes.

--azure-max-block-size
Specify the number for the block size used by the Azure library to upload blobs if it
is split into multiple blocks. The maximum block size the service supports is
104857600 (100MiB) and the default is 4194304 (4MiB)

--azure-max-connections
Specify the number of maximum connections to transfer one blob to Azure blob size
exceeds 64MB. The default values is 2.

--b2-hide-files
Causes Duplicity to hide files in B2 instead of deleting them. Useful in combination
with B2's lifecycle rules.

--backend-retry-delay number
Specifies the number of seconds that duplicity waits after an error has occurred
before attempting to repeat the operation.

--cf-backend backend
Allows the explicit selection of a cloudfiles backend. Defaults to pyrax.
Alternatively you might choose cloudfiles.

--config-dir path
Allows selection of duplicity's configuratin dir. Defaults to ~/.config/duplicity.

--copy-blocksize kilos
Allows selection of blocksize in kilobytes to use in copying. Increasing this may
speed copying of large files. Defaults to 128.

--no-check-remote
Turn off validation of the remote manifest. Checking is the default. No checking
will allow you to backup without the private key, but will mean that the remote
manifest may exist and be corrupted, leading to the possibility that the backup might
not be recoverable.

--compare-data
Enable data comparison of regular files on action verify. This conducts a verify as
described above to verify the integrity of the backup archives, but additionally
compares restored files to those in target_directory. Duplicity will not replace any
files in target_directory. Duplicity will exit with a non-zero error level if the
files do not correctly verify or if any files from the archive differ from those in
target_directory. On verbosity level 4 or higher, it will log a message for each file
that differs from its equivalent in target_directory.

--copy-links
Resolve symlinks during backup. Enabling this will resolve & back up the symlink's
file/folder data instead of the symlink itself, potentially increasing the size of the
backup.

--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
duplicity is not handling device files correctly.

--exclude-filelist filename
Excludes the files listed in filename, with each line of the filelist interpreted
according to the same rules as --include and --exclude. See the FILE SELECTION
section for more information.

--exclude-if-present filename
Exclude directories if filename is present. Allows the user to specify folders that
they do not wish to backup by adding a specified file (e.g. ".nobackup") instead of
maintaining a comprehensive exclude/include list.

--exclude-older-than time
Exclude any files whose modification date is earlier than the specified time. This
can be used to produce a partial backup that contains only recently changed files. See
the TIME FORMATS section for more information.

--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.

--files-from filename
Read a list of files to backup from filename rather than searching the entire backup
source directory. Operation is otherwise normal, just on the specified subset of the
backup source directory.

Files must be specified one per line and relative to the backup source directory. Any
absolute paths will raise an error. All characters per line are significant and
treated as part of the path, including leading and trailing whitespace. Lines are
separated by newlines or nulls, depending on whether the --null-separator switch was
given.

It is not necessary to include the parent directory of listed files, their inclusion
is implied. However, the content of any explicitly listed directories is not implied.
All required files must be listed when this option is used.

--file-prefix prefix
--file-prefix-manifest prefix
--file-prefix-archive prefix
--file-prefix-signature prefix
Adds a prefix to either all files or only manifest, archive, signature files. The
same set of prefixes must be passed in on backup and restore.
If both global and type-specific prefixes are set, global prefix will go before type-
specific prefixes.

See also A NOTE ON AMAZON S3 below.

--s3-multipart-max-procs
Maximum number of concurrent uploads when performing a multipart upload. The default
is 4. You can adjust this number to maximizing bandwidth and CPU utilization.

NOTE: Too many concurrent uploads may have diminishing returns.

See also A NOTE ON AMAZON S3 below.

--s3-region-name
Specifies the region of the S3 storage. Usually mandatory if the bucket is created in
a specific region.

--s3-unencrypted-connection
Disable SSL for connections to S3. This may be much faster, at some cost to
confidentiality.

With this option set, anyone between your computer and S3 can observe the traffic and
will be able to tell: that you are using Duplicity, the name of the bucket, your AWS
Access Key ID, the increment dates and the amount of data in each increment.

This option affects only the connection, not the GPG encryption of the backup
increment files. Unless that is disabled, an observer will not be able to see the file
names or contents.

See also A NOTE ON AMAZON S3 below.

--s3-use-deep-archive
Store volumes using Glacier Deep Archive S3 when uploading to Amazon S3. This storage
class has a lower cost of storage but a higher per-request cost along with delays of
up to 48 hours from the time of retrieval request. This storage cost is calculated
against a 180-day storage minimum. According to Amazon this storage is ideal for data
archiving and long-term backup offering 99.999999999% durability. To restore a backup
you will have to manually migrate all data stored on AWS Glacier Deep Archive back to
Standard S3 and wait for AWS to complete the migration.

NOTE: Duplicity will store the manifest.gpg and sigtar.gpg files from full and
incremental backups on AWS S3 standard storage to allow quick retrieval for later
incremental backups, all other data is stored in S3 Glacier Deep Archive.

--s3-use-glacier
Store volumes using Glacier Flexible Storage when uploading to Amazon S3. This storage
class has a lower cost of storage but a higher per-request cost along with delays of
up to 12 hours from the time of retrieval request. This storage cost is calculated
against a 90-day storage minimum. According to Amazon this storage is ideal for data
archiving and long-term backup offering 99.999999999% durability. To restore a backup
you will have to manually migrate all data stored on AWS Glacier back to Standard S3
and wait for AWS to complete the migration.

--s3-use-glacier-ir
Store volumes using Glacier Instant Retrieval when uploading to Amazon S3. This
storage class is similar to Glacier Flexible Storage but offers instant retrieval at
standard speeds.

--s3-use-ia
Store volumes using Standard - Infrequent Access when uploading to Amazon S3. This
storage class has a lower storage cost but a higher per-request cost, and the storage
cost is calculated against a 30-day storage minimum. According to Amazon, this storage
is ideal for long-term file storage, backups, and disaster recovery.

--s3-use-onezone-ia
Store volumes using One Zone - Infrequent Access when uploading to Amazon S3. This
storage is similar to Standard - Infrequent Access, but only stores object data in one
Availability Zone.

--s3-use-rrs
Store volumes using Reduced Redundancy Storage when uploading to Amazon S3. This will
lower the cost of storage but also lower the durability of stored volumes to 99.99%
instead the 99.999999999% durability offered by Standard Storage on S3.

--s3-use-server-side-kms-encryption
--s3-kms-key-id key_id
--s3-kms-grant grant
Enable server-side encryption using key management service.

--skip-if-no-change command
By default an empty incremental backup is created if no files have changed. Setting
this option will skip creating a backup if no data has changed. Nothing will be sent
to the target nor information be cached.

--scp-command command
(only ssh pexpect backend with --use-scp enabled)
The command will be used instead of "scp" to send or receive files. To list and
delete existing files, the sftp command is used.
See also A NOTE ON SSH BACKENDS section SSH pexpect backend.

--sftp-command command
(only ssh pexpect backend)
The command will be used instead of "sftp".
See also A NOTE ON SSH BACKENDS section SSH pexpect backend.

--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 given
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.
See also A NOTE ON SYMMETRIC ENCRYPTION AND SIGNING

--ssh-askpass
Tells the ssh backend to prompt the user for the remote system password, if it was not
defined in target url and no FTP_PASSWORD env var is set. This password is also used
for passphrase-protected ssh keys.

--ssh-options options
Allows you to pass options to the ssh backend. Can be specified multiple times or as
a space separated options list. 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. The option string will be passed verbatim to both scp and
sftp, whose command line syntax differs slightly hence the options should therefore be
given in the long option format described in ssh_config(5).

example of a list:

duplicity --ssh-options="-oProtocol=2 -oIdentityFile='/my/backup/id'" /home/me
scp://user@host/some_dir

example with multiple parameters:

duplicity --ssh-options="-oProtocol=2" --ssh-
options="-oIdentityFile='/my/backup/id'" /home/me scp://user@host/some_dir

NOTE: The ssh paramiko backend currently supports only the -i or -oIdentityFile or
-oUserKnownHostsFile or -oGlobalKnownHostsFile settings. If needed provide more host
specific options via ssh_config file.

--ssl-cacert-file file
(only webdav & lftp backend) Provide a cacert file for ssl certificate verification.

See also A NOTE ON SSL CERTIFICATE VERIFICATION.

--ssl-cacert-path path/to/certs/
(only webdav backend and python 2.7.9+ OR lftp+webdavs and a recent lftp) Provide a
path to a folder containing cacert files for ssl certificate verification.

See also A NOTE ON SSL CERTIFICATE VERIFICATION.

--ssl-no-check-certificate
(only webdav & lftp backend) Disable ssl certificate verification.

See also A NOTE ON SSL CERTIFICATE VERIFICATION.

--swift-storage-policy
Use this storage policy when operating on Swift containers.

See also A NOTE ON SWIFT (OPENSTACK OBJECT STORAGE) ACCESS.

--metadata-sync-mode mode
This option defaults to 'partial', but you can set it to 'full'

Use 'partial' to avoid syncing metadata for backup chains that you are not going to
use. This saves time when restoring for the first time, and lets you restore an old
backup that was encrypted with a different passphrase by supplying only the target
passphrase.

Use 'full' to sync metadata for all backup chains on the remote.

--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.

See also A NOTE ON AMAZON S3 below.

SCP/SFTP Secure Copy Protocol/SSH File Transfer Protocol
scp://.. or
sftp://user[:pwd]@other.host[:port]/[relative|/absolute]_path

defaults are paramiko+scp:// and paramiko+sftp://
alternatively try pexpect+scp://, pexpect+sftp://, lftp+sftp://
See also --ssh-askpass, --ssh-options and A NOTE ON SSH BACKENDS.

slate
slate://[slate-id]

See also A NOTE ON THE XORRISO BACKEND

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
When duplicity is run, it searches through the given source directory and backs up all the
files specified by the file selection system, unless --files-from has been specified in which
case the passed list of individual files is used instead.

The file selection system comprises a number of file selection conditions, which are set
using one of the following command line options:

--exclude
--exclude-device-files
--exclude-if-present
--exclude-filelist
--exclude-regexp
--include
--include-filelist
--include-regexp

For each individual file found in the source directory, the file selection conditions are
checked in the order they are specified on the command line. Should a selection condition
match, the file will be included or excluded accordingly and the file selection system will
proceed to the next file without checking the remaining conditions.

Earlier arguments therefore take precedence where multiple conditions match any given file,
and are thus usually given in order of decreasing specificity. If no selection conditions
match a given file, then the file is implicitly included.

For example,

duplicity --include /usr --exclude /usr /usr scp://user@host/backup

is exactly the same as

duplicity /usr scp://user@host/backup

because the --include directive matches all files in the backup source directory, and takes
precedence over the contradicting --exclude option as it comes first.

As a more meaningful example,

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. Note
that this is not the same as simply specifying /usr/local/bin as the backup source, as other
files and folders under /usr will also be (implicitly) included.

The order of the --include and --exclude arguments is important. In the previous example, if
the less specific --exclude directive had precedence it would prevent the more specific
--include from matching any files.

The patterns passed to the --include, --exclude, --include-filelist, and --exclude-filelist
options are interpretted as extended shell globbing patterns by default. This behaviour can
be changed with the following filter mode arguments:

--filter-globbing
--filter-literal
--filter-regexp

These arguments change the interpretation of the patterns used in selection conditions,
affecting all subsequent file selection options passed on the command line. They may be
specified multiple times in order to switch pattern interpretations as needed.

Literal strings differ from globs in that the pattern must match the filename exactly. This
can be useful where filenames contain characters which have special meaning in shell globs or
regular expressions. If passing dynamically generated file lists to duplicity using the
--include-filelist or --exclude-filelist options, then the use of --filter-literal is
recommended unless regular expression or globbing is specifically required.

The regular expression language used for selection conditions specified with --include-regexp
, --exclude-regexp , or when --filter-regexp is in effect is as implemented by the Python
standard library.

Extended shell globbing pattenrs may contain: *, **, ?, and [...] (character ranges). As in
a normal shell, * can be expanded to any string of characters not containing "/", ? expands
to any single character except "/", and [...] expands to a single character of those
characters specified (ranges are acceptable). The pattern ** expands to any string of
characters whether or not it contains "/".

In addition to the above filter mode arguments, the following can be used in the same fashion
to enable (default) or disable case sensitivity in the evaluation of file sslection
conditions:

--filter-ignorecase
--filter-strictcase

An example of filter mode switching including case insensitivity is

--filter-ignorecase --include /usr/bin/*.PY --filter-literal --filter-include
/usr/bin/special?file*name --filter-strictcase --exclude /usr/bin

which would backup *.py, *.pY, *.Py, and *.PY files under /usr/bin and also the single
literally specified file with globbing characters in the name. The use of --filter-strictcase
is not technically necessary here, but is included as an example which may (depending on the
backup source path) cause unexpected interactions between --include and --exclude options,
should the directory portion of the path (/usr/bin) contain any uppercase characters.

If the pattern starts with "ignorecase:" (case insensitive), then this prefix will be removed
and any character in the string can be replaced with an upper- or lowercase version of
itself. This prefix is a legacy feature supported for shell globbing selection conditions
only, but for backward compatability reasons is otherwise considered part of the pattern
itself (use --filter-ignorecase instead).

Remember that you may need to quote patterns when typing them into a shell, so the shell does
not interpret the globbing patterns or whitespace characters before duplicity sees them.

Selection patterns should generally be thought of as filesystem paths rather than arbitrary
strings. For selection conditions using extended shell globbing patterns, the --exclude
pattern option matches a file if:

1. pattern can be expanded into the file's filename, or
2. the file is inside a directory matched by the option.

Conversely, the --include pattern option matches a file if:

1. pattern can be expanded into the file's filename, or
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.

For example,

--exclude /usr/local

matches e.g. /usr/local, /usr/local/lib, and /usr/local/lib/netscape. It is the same as
--exclude /usr/local --exclude '/usr/local/**'.
On the other hand

--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 alone.

This treatment of patterns in globbing and literal selection conditions as filesystem paths
reduces the number of explicit conditions required. However, it does require that the paths
described by all variants of the --include or --include option are fully specified relative
to the backup source directory.

For selection conditions using literal strings, the same logic applies except that scenario 1
is for an exact match of the pattern.

For selection conditions using regular expressions the pattern is evaluated as a regular
expression rather than a filesystem path. Scenario 3 in the above therefore does not apply,
the implications of which are discussed at the end of this section.

The --include-filelist, and --exclude-filelist, options also introduce file selection
conditions. They direct duplicity to read in a text file (either ASCII or UTF-8), each line
of which is a file specification, and to include or exclude the matching files. Lines are
separated by newlines or nulls, depending on whether the --null-separator switch was given.

Each line in the filelist will be interpreted as a selection pattern in the same way
--include and --exclude options are interpreted, except that 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.

For example, if file "list.txt" contains the lines:

/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 would also include
/usr/local/man, as this is included within /usr/local. Finally, it is undefined what happens
with /var. A single file list should not contain conflicting file specifications.

Each line in the filelist will be interpreted as per the current filter mode in the same way
--include and --exclude options are interpreted. For instance, if the file "list.txt"
contains the lines:

dir/foo
+ dir/bar
- **

Then --include-filelist list.txt would be exactly the same as specifying --include dir/foo
--include dir/bar --exclude ** on the command line.

Note that specifying very large numbers numbers of selection rules as filelists can incur a
substantial performance penalty as these rules will (potentially) be checked for every file
in the backup source directory. If you need to backup arbitrary lists of specific files (i.e.
not described by regexp patterns or shell globs) then --files-from is likely to be more
performant.

Finally, the --include-regexp and --exclude-regexp options allow files to be included and
excluded if their filenames match a regular expression. Regular expression syntax is too
complicated to explain here, but is covered in Python's library reference. Unlike the
--include and --exclude options, the regular expression options don't match files containing
or contained in matched files. So for instance

--include-regexp '[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 AMAZON DRIVE
1. The API Keys used for Amazon Drive have not been granted production limits. Amazon do
not say what the development limits are and are not replying to to requests to
whitelist duplicity. A related tool, acd_cli, was demoted to development limits, but
continues to work fine except for cases of excessive usage. If you experience
throttling and similar issues with Amazon Drive using this backend, please report them
to the mailing list.
2. If you previously used the acd+acdcli backend, it is strongly recommended to update to
the ad backend instead, since it interfaces directly with Amazon Drive. You will need
to setup the OAuth once again, but can otherwise keep your backups and config.

A NOTE ON AMAZON S3
Backing up to Amazon S3 utilizes the boto3 library.

The boto3 backend does not support bucket creation. This deliberate choice simplifies the
code, and side steps problems related to region selection. Additionally, it is probably not
a good practice to give your backup role bucket creation rights. In most cases the role used
for backups should probably be limited to specific buckets.

The boto3 backend only supports newer domain style buckets. Amazon is moving to deprecate the
older bucket style, so migration is recommended.

The boto3 backend does not currently support initiating restores from the glacier storage
class. When restoring a backup from glacier or glacier deep archive, the backup files must
first be restored out of band. There are multiple options when restoring backups from cold
storage, which vary in both cost and speed. See Amazon's documentation for details.

The following environment variables are required for authentication:
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID (required),
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY (required)
or
BOTO_CONFIG (required) pointing to a boto config file.
For simplicity's sake we will document the use of the AWS_* vars only. Research boto3
documentation available in the web if you want to use the config file.

boto3 backend example backup command line:

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<key_id> AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<access_key> duplicity /some/path
s3:///bucket/subfolder

you may add --s3-endpoint-url (to access non Amazon S3 services or regional endpoints) and
may need --s3-region-name (for buckets created in specific regions) and other --s3-...
options documented above.

A NOTE ON AZURE ACCESS
The Azure backend requires the Microsoft Azure Storage Blobs client library for Python to be
installed on the system. See REQUIREMENTS.

It uses the environment variable AZURE_CONNECTION_STRING (required). This string contains
all necessary information such as Storage Account name and the key for authentication. You
can find it under Access Keys for the storage account.

Duplicity will take care to create the container when performing the backup. Do not create
it manually before.

A container name (as given as the backup url) must be a valid DNS name, conforming to the
following naming rules:

1. Container names must start with a letter or number, and can contain only
letters, numbers, and the dash (-) character.
2. Every dash (-) character must be immediately preceded and followed by a letter
or number; consecutive dashes are not permitted in container names.
3. All letters in a container name must be lowercase.
4. Container names must be from 3 through 63 characters long.

These rules come from Azure; see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/rest/api/storageservices/naming-and-referencing-containers--blobs--and-metadata

A NOTE ON BOX ACCESS
The box backend requires boxsdk with jwt support to be installed on the system. See
REQUIREMENTS.

It uses the environment variable BOX_CONFIG_PATH (optional). This string contains the path
to box custom app's config.json. Either this environment variable or the config query
parameter in the url need to be specified, if both are specified, query parameter takes
precedence.

Create a Box custom app
In order to use box backend, user need to create a box custom app in the box developer
console (https://app.box.com/developers/console).

After create a new custom app, please make sure it is configured as follow:

1. Choose "App Access Only" for "App Access Level"
2. Check "Write all files and folders stored in Box"
3. Generate a Public/Private Keypair

The user also need to grant the created custom app permission in the admin console
(https://app.box.com/master/custom-apps) by clicking the "+" button and enter the client_id
which can be found on the custom app's configuration page.

A NOTE ON CLOUD FILES ACCESS
Pyrax is Rackspace's next-generation Cloud management API, including Cloud Files access. The
cfpyrax backend requires the pyrax library to be installed on the system. See REQUIREMENTS.

Cloudfiles is Rackspace's now deprecated implementation of OpenStack Object Storage protocol.
Users wishing to use Duplicity with Rackspace Cloud Files should migrate to the new Pyrax
plugin to ensure support.

The backend requires python-cloudfiles to be installed on the system. See REQUIREMENTS.

It uses three environment variables for authentication: CLOUDFILES_USERNAME (required),
CLOUDFILES_APIKEY (required), CLOUDFILES_AUTHURL (optional)

If CLOUDFILES_AUTHURL is unspecified it will default to the value provided by python-
cloudfiles, which points to rackspace, hence this value must be set in order to use other
cloud files providers.

A NOTE ON DROPBOX ACCESS
1. First of all Dropbox backend requires valid authentication token. It should be passed
via DPBX_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable.
To obtain it please create 'Dropbox API' application at:
https://www.dropbox.com/developers/apps/create
Then visit app settings and just use 'Generated access token' under OAuth2 section.
Alternatively you can let duplicity generate access token itself. In such case
temporary export DPBX_APP_KEY , DPBX_APP_SECRET using values from app settings page
and run duplicity interactively.
It will print the URL that you need to open in the browser to obtain OAuth2 token for
the application. Just follow on-screen instructions and then put generated token to
DPBX_ACCESS_TOKEN variable. Once done, feel free to unset DPBX_APP_KEY and
DPBX_APP_SECRET

2. "some_dir" must already exist in the Dropbox folder. Depending on access token kind it
may be:
Full Dropbox: path is absolute and starts from 'Dropbox' root folder.
App Folder: path is related to application folder. Dropbox client will show it
in ~/Dropbox/Apps/<app-name>

3. When using Dropbox for storage, be aware that all files, including the ones in the
Apps folder, will be synced to all connected computers. You may prefer to use a
separate Dropbox account specially for the backups, and not connect any computers to
that account. Alternatively you can configure selective sync on all computers to avoid
syncing of backup files

A NOTE ON FILENAME PREFIXES
Filename prefixes can be used in multi backend with mirror mode to define affinity rules.
They can also be used in conjunction with S3 lifecycle rules to transition archive files to
Glacier, while keeping metadata (signature and manifest files) on S3.

Duplicity does not require access to archive files except when restoring from backup.

A NOTE ON GOOGLE CLOUD STORAGE (GCS via Interoperable Access)
Overview
Duplicity access to GCS currently relies on it's Interoperability API (basically S3 for GCS).
This needs to actively be enabled before access is possible. For details read the next
section Preparations below.

Preparations
1. login on https://console.cloud.google.com/
2. go to Cloud Storage->Settings->Interoperability
3. create a Service account (if needed)
4. create Service account HMAC access key and secret (!!instantly copy!! the secret, it
can NOT be recovered later)
5. go to Cloud Storage->Browser
6. create a bucket
7. add permissions for Service account that was used to set up Interoperability access
above

Once set up you can use the generated Interoperable Storage Access key and secret and pass
them to duplicity as described in the next section.

Usage
The following examples show accessing GCS via S3 for a collection-status action. The shown
env vars, options and url format can be applied for all other actions as well of course.

using boto3 supplying the --s3-endpoint-url manually.

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<keyid> AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<secret> duplicity collection-status
s3:///<bucket>/<folder> --s3-endpoint-url=https://storage.googleapis.com

A NOTE ON GDRIVE BACKEND
GDrive: is a rewritten PyDrive: backend with less dependencies, and a simpler setup - it uses
the JSON keys downloaded directly from Google Cloud Console.

Note Google has 2 drive methods, `Shared(previously Team) Drives` and `My Drive`, both can be
shared but require different addressing

For a Google Shared Drives folder

Share Drive ID specified as a query parameter, driveID, in the backend URL. Example:
gdrive://developer.gserviceaccount.com/target-folder/?driveID=<SHARED DRIVE ID>

For a Google My Drive based shared folder

MyDrive folder ID specified as a query parameter, myDriveFolderID, in the backend URL Example
export GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_URL=<serviceaccount-name>@<serviceaccount-
name>.iam.gserviceaccount.com
gdrive://${GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_URL}/<target-folder-name-in-
myDriveFolder>?myDriveFolderID=root

There are also two ways to authenticate to use GDrive: with a regular account or with a
"service account". With a service account, a separate account is created, that is only
accessible with Google APIs and not a web login. With a regular account, you can store
backups in your normal Google Drive.

To use a service account, go to the Google developers console at
https://console.developers.google.com. Create a project, and make sure Drive API is enabled
for the project. In the "Credentials" section, click "Create credentials", then select
Service Account with JSON key.

The GOOGLE_SERVICE_JSON_FILE environment variable needs to contain the path to the JSON file
on duplicity invocation.

export GOOGLE_SERVICE_JSON_FILE=<path-to-serviceaccount-credentials.json>

The alternative is to use a regular account. To do this, start as above, but when creating a
new Client ID, select "Create OAuth client ID", with application type of "Desktop app".
Download the client_secret.json file for the new client, and set the
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET_JSON_FILE environment variable to the path to this file, and
GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS_FILE to a path to a file where duplicity will keep the authentication
token - this location must be writable.

NOTE: As a sanity check, GDrive checks the host and username from the URL against the JSON
key, and refuses to proceed if the addresses do not match. Either the email (for the service
accounts) or Client ID (for regular OAuth accounts) must be present in the URL. See URL
FORMAT above.

First run / OAuth 2.0 authorization
During the first run, you will be prompted to visit an URL in your browser to grant access to
your Google Drive. A temporary HTTP-service will be started on a local network interface for
this purpose (by default on http://localhost:8080/). Ip-address/host and port can be
adjusted if need be by providing the environment variables GOOGLE_OAUTH_LOCAL_SERVER_HOST,
GOOGLE_OAUTH_LOCAL_SERVER_PORT respectively.

If you are running duplicity in a remote location, you will need to make sure that you will
be able to access the above HTTP-service with a browser utilizing e.g. port forwarding or
temporary firewall permission.

The access credentials will be saved in the JSON file mentioned above for future use after a
successful authorization.

A NOTE ON HUBIC
The hubic backend requires the pyrax library to be installed on the system. See REQUIREMENTS.
You will need to set your credentials for hubiC in a file called ~/.hubic_credentials,
following this pattern:
[hubic]
email = your_email
password = your_password
client_id = api_client_id
client_secret = api_secret_key
redirect_uri = http://localhost/

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) action the
from_address_prefix will distinguish between different backups.

A NOTE ON MEDIAFIRE BACKEND
This backend requires mediafire python library to be installed on the system. See
REQUIREMENTS.

Use URL escaping for username (and password, if provided via command line):

mf://duplicity%40example.com AT mediafire.com/some_folder
The destination folder will be created for you if it does not exist.

A NOTE ON MULTI BACKEND
The multi backend allows duplicity to combine the storage available in more than one backend
store (e.g., you can store across a google drive account and a onedrive account to get
effectively the combined storage available in both). The URL path specifies a JSON formatted
config file containing a list of the backends it will use. The URL may also specify "query"
parameters to configure overall behavior. Each element of the list must have a "url"
element, and may also contain an optional "description" and an optional "env" list of
environment variables used to configure that backend.
Query Parameters
Query parameters come after the file URL in standard HTTP format for example:
multi:///path/to/config.json?mode=mirror&onfail=abort
multi:///path/to/config.json?mode=stripe&onfail=continue
multi:///path/to/config.json?onfail=abort&mode=stripe
multi:///path/to/config.json?onfail=abort
Order does not matter, however unrecognized parameters are considered an error.

mode=stripe
This mode (the default) performs round-robin access to the list of backends. In this
mode, all backends must be reliable as a loss of one means a loss of one of the
archive files.

mode=mirror
This mode accesses backends as a RAID1-store, storing every file in every backend and
reading files from the first-successful backend. A loss of any backend should result
in no failure. Note that backends added later will only get new files and may require
a manual sync with one of the other operating ones.

onfail=continue
This setting (the default) continues all write operations in as best-effort. Any
failure results in the next backend tried. Failure is reported only when all backends
fail a given operation with the error result from the last failure.

onfail=abort
This setting considers any backend write failure as a terminating condition and
reports the error. Data reading and listing operations are independent of this and
will try with the next backend on failure.
JSON File Example
[
{
"description": "a comment about the backend"
"url": "abackend://myuser AT domain.com/backup",
"env": [
{
"name" : "MYENV",
"value" : "xyz"
},
{
"name" : "FOO",
"value" : "bar"
}
],
"prefixes": ["prefix1_", "prefix2_"]
},
{
"url": "file:///path/to/dir"
}
]

A NOTE ON ONEDRIVE BACKEND
onedrive:// works with both personal and business onedrive as well as sharepoint drives. On
first use you be provided with an URL to with a microsoft account. Open it in your web
browser.

After authenticating, copy the redirected URL back to duplicity. Duplicity will fetch a token
and store it in ~/.duplicity_onedrive_oauthtoken.json. This location can be overridden by
setting the DUPLICITY_ONEDRIVE_TOKEN environment variable.

Duplicity uses a default App ID registered with Microsoft Azure AD. It will need to be
approved by an administrator of your Office365 Tenant on a business account.

2. Choose "Enterprise Applications", then "Create your own Application"

3. Input your application name and select "Register an application to integrate with
Azure AD".

4. Continue to the next page and set the redirect uri to
"https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/nativeclient", choosing "Public
client/native" from the dropdown. Click create.

5. Find the application id in "Enterprise Applications" and set the environment variable
DUPLICITY_ONEDRIVE_CLIENT_ID to it.

More information on Microsoft Apps at: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-
directory/develop/quickstart-register-app

Backup to a sharepoint site instead of onedrive
to use a sharepoint site you need to find and provide the site's tenant and site id.

1. Login with your Microsoft Account at https://<o365_tenant>.sharepoint.com/

2. Navigate to https://<o365_tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/<path_to_site>/_api/site/id

3. Copy the disyplayed UUID (site_id) and set the DUPLICITY_ONEDRIVE_ROOT environment
variable to "sites/<o365_tenant>.sharepoint.com,<site_id>/drive"

A NOTE ON PAR2 WRAPPER BACKEND
Par2 Wrapper Backend can be used in combination with all other backends to create recovery
files. Just add par2+ before a regular scheme (e.g. par2+ftp://user@host/dir or
par2+s3+http://bucket_name ). This will create par2 recovery files for each archive and
upload them all to the wrapped backend.
Before restoring, archives will be verified. Corrupt archives will be repaired on the fly if
there are enough recovery blocks available.
Use --par2-redundancy percent to adjust the size (and redundancy) of recovery files in
percent.

A NOTE ON PCA ACCESS
PCA is a long-term data archival solution by OVH. It runs a slightly modified version of
Openstack Swift introducing latency in the data retrieval process. It is a good pick for a
multi backend configuration where receiving volumes while another backend is used to store
manifests and signatures.

The backend requires python-switclient to be installed on the system. python-keystoneclient
is also needed to interact with OpenStack's Keystone Identity service. See REQUIREMENTS.

It uses following environment variables for authentication: PCA_USERNAME (required),
PCA_PASSWORD (required), PCA_AUTHURL (required), PCA_USERID (optional), PCA_TENANTID
(optional, but either the tenant name or tenant id must be supplied) PCA_REGIONNAME
(optional), PCA_TENANTNAME (optional, but either the tenant name or tenant id must be
supplied)

If the user was previously authenticated, the following environment variables can be used
instead: PCA_PREAUTHURL (required), PCA_PREAUTHTOKEN (required)

If PCA_AUTHVERSION is unspecified, it will default to version 2.

A NOTE ON PYDRIVE BACKEND
The pydrive backend requires Python PyDrive package to be installed on the system. See
REQUIREMENTS.

There are two ways to use PyDrive: with a regular account or with a "service account". With a
service account, a separate account is created, that is only accessible with Google APIs and
not a web login. With a regular account, you can store backups in your normal Google Drive.

To use a service account, go to the Google developers console at
https://console.developers.google.com. Create a project, and make sure Drive API is enabled
for the project. Under "APIs and auth", click Create New Client ID, then select Service
Account with P12 key.

Download the .p12 key file of the account and convert it to the .pem format:
openssl pkcs12 -in XXX.p12 -nodes -nocerts > pydriveprivatekey.pem

The content of .pem file should be passed to GOOGLE_DRIVE_ACCOUNT_KEY environment variable
for authentication.

The email address of the account will be used as part of URL. See URL FORMAT above.

The alternative is to use a regular account. To do this, start as above, but when creating a
new Client ID, select "Installed application" of type "Other". Create a file with the
following content, and pass its filename in the GOOGLE_DRIVE_SETTINGS environment variable:
client_config_backend: settings
client_config:
client_id: <Client ID from developers' console>
client_secret: <Client secret from developers' console>
save_credentials: True
save_credentials_backend: file
save_credentials_file: <filename to cache credentials>
get_refresh_token: True

In this scenario, the username and host parts of the URL play no role; only the path matters.
During the first run, you will be prompted to visit an URL in your browser to grant access to
your drive. Once granted, you will receive a verification code to paste back into Duplicity.
The credentials are then cached in the file references above for future use.

A NOTE ON RCLONE BACKEND
Rclone is a powerful command line program to sync files and directories to and from various
cloud storage providers.

Usage
Once you have configured an rclone remote via

rclone config

and successfully set up a remote (e.g. gdrive for Google Drive), assuming you can list your
remote files with

rclone ls gdrive:mydocuments

you can start your backup with

duplicity /mydocuments rclone://gdrive:/mydocuments

Please note the slash after the second colon. Some storage provider will work with or without
slash after colon, but some other will not. Since duplicity will complain about malformed URL
if a slash is not present, always put it after the colon, and the backend will handle it for
you.

Options
Note that all rclone options can be set by env vars as well. This is properly documented here

https://rclone.org/docs/

but in a nutshell you need to take the long option name, strip the leading --, change - to _,
make upper case and prepend RCLONE_. for example

the equivalent of '--stats 5s' would be the env var RCLONE_STATS=5s

A NOTE ON SLATE BACKEND
Three environment variables are used with the slate backend:
1. `SLATE_API_KEY` - Your slate API key
2. `SLATE_SSL_VERIFY` - either '1'(True) or '0'(False) for ssl verification (optional -
True by default)
3. `PASSPHRASE` - your gpg passhprase for encryption (optional - will be prompted if not
set or not used at all if using the `--no-encryption` parameter)

To use the slate backend, use the following scheme:
slate://[slate-id]

e.g. Full backup of current directory to slate:
duplicity full . "slate://6920df43-5c3w-2x7i-69aw-2390567uav75"

Here's a demo:
https://gitlab.com/Shr1ftyy/duplicity/uploads/675664ef0eb431d14c8e20045e3fafb6/slate_demo.mp4

A NOTE ON SSH BACKENDS
The ssh backends support sftp and scp/ssh transport protocols. This is a known user-
confusing issue as these are fundamentally different. If you plan to access your backend via
one of those please inform yourself about the requirements for a server to support sftp or
scp/ssh access. To make it even more confusing the user can choose between several ssh
backends via a scheme prefix: paramiko+ (default), pexpect+, lftp+... .
paramiko & pexpect support --use-scp, --ssh-askpass and --ssh-options. Only the pexpect
backend allows one to define --scp-command and --sftp-command.
SSH paramiko backend (default) is a complete reimplementation of ssh protocols natively in
python. Advantages are speed and maintainability. Minor disadvantage is that extra packages
are needed as listed in REQUIREMENTS. In sftp (default) mode all operations are done via the
according sftp commands. In scp mode ( --use-scp ) though scp access is used for put/get
operations but listing is done via ssh remote shell.
SSH pexpect backend is the legacy ssh backend using the command line ssh binaries via
pexpect. Older versions used scp for get and put operations and sftp for list and delete
operations. The current version uses sftp for all four supported operations, unless the
--use-scp option is used to revert to old behavior.
SSH lftp backend is simply there because lftp can interact with the ssh cmd line binaries.
It is meant as a last resort in case the above options fail for some reason.

Why use sftp instead of scp?
The change to sftp was made in order to allow the remote system to chroot the backup, thus
providing better security and because it does not suffer from shell quoting issues like scp.
Scp also does not support any kind of file listing, so sftp or ssh access will always be
needed in addition for this backend mode to work properly. Sftp does not have these
limitations but needs an sftp service running on the backend server, which is sometimes not
an option.

A NOTE ON SSL CERTIFICATE VERIFICATION
Certificate verification as implemented right now [02.2016] only in the webdav and lftp
backends. older pythons 2.7.8- and older lftp binaries need a file based database of
certification authority certificates (cacert file).
Newer python 2.7.9+ and recent lftp versions however support the system default certificates
(usually in /etc/ssl/certs) and also giving an alternative ca cert folder via --ssl-cacert-
path.
The cacert file has to be a PEM formatted text file as currently provided by the CURL
project. See
http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html
After creating/retrieving a valid cacert file you should copy it to either
~/.duplicity/cacert.pem
~/duplicity_cacert.pem
/etc/duplicity/cacert.pem
Duplicity searches it there in the same order and will fail if it can't find it. You can
however specify the option --ssl-cacert-file <file> to point duplicity to a copy in a
different location.
Finally there is the --ssl-no-check-certificate option to disable certificate verification
altogether, in case some ssl library is missing or verification is not wanted. Use it with
care, as even with self signed servers manually providing the private ca certificate is
definitely the safer option.

A NOTE ON SWIFT (OPENSTACK OBJECT STORAGE) ACCESS
Swift is the OpenStack Object Storage service.
The backend requires python-switclient to be installed on the system. python-keystoneclient
is also needed to use OpenStack's Keystone Identity service. See REQUIREMENTS.

It uses following environment variables for authentication:

SWIFT_USERNAME (required),
SWIFT_PASSWORD (required),
SWIFT_AUTHURL (required),
SWIFT_TENANTID or SWIFT_TENANTNAME (required with SWIFT_AUTHVERSION=2, can
alternatively be defined in SWIFT_USERNAME like e.g.
SWIFT_USERNAME="tenantname:user"),
SWIFT_PROJECT_ID or SWIFT_PROJECT_NAME (required with SWIFT_AUTHVERSION=3),
SWIFT_USERID (optional, required only for IBM Bluemix ObjectStorage),
SWIFT_REGIONNAME (optional).

If the user was previously authenticated, the following environment variables can be used
instead: SWIFT_PREAUTHURL (required), SWIFT_PREAUTHTOKEN (required)

If SWIFT_AUTHVERSION is unspecified, it will default to version 1.

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.

A NOTE ON THE XORRISO BACKEND
This backend uses the xorriso tool to append backups to optical media or ISO9660 images.

Use the following environment variables for more settings:
XORRISO_PATH, set an alternative path to the xorriso executable
XORRISO_WRITE_SPEED, specify the speed for writing to the optical disc. One of [min,
max]
XORRISO_ASSERT_VOLID, specify the required volume ID of the ISO. Aborts when the
actual volume ID is different.
XORRISO_ARGS, for expert use only. Pass arbitrary arguments to xorriso. Example:
XORRISO_ARGS='-md5 all'

KNOWN ISSUES / BUGS
Hard links currently unsupported (they will be treated as non-linked regular files).

Bad signatures will be treated as empty instead of logging appropriate error message.

OPERATION AND DATA FORMATS
This section describes duplicity's basic operation and the format of its data files. It
should not be necessary to read this section to use duplicity.

The files used by duplicity to store backup data are tarfiles in GNU tar format. For
incremental backups, new files are saved normally in the tarfile. But when a file changes,
instead of storing a complete copy of the file, only a diff is stored, as generated by
rdiff(1). If a file is deleted, a 0 length file is stored in the tar. It is possible to
restore a duplicity archive "manually" by using tar and then cp, rdiff, and rm as necessary.
These duplicity archives have the extension difftar.

Both full and incremental backup sets have the same format. In effect, a full backup set is
an incremental one generated from an empty signature (see below). The files in full backup
sets will start with duplicity-full while the incremental sets start with duplicity-inc.
When restoring, duplicity applies patches in order, so deleting, for instance, a full backup
set may make related incremental backup sets unusable.

In order to determine which files have been deleted, and to calculate diffs for changed
files, duplicity needs to process information about previous sessions. It stores this
information in the form of tarfiles where each entry's data contains the signature (as
produced by rdiff) of the file instead of the file's contents. These signature sets have the
extension sigtar.

Signature files are not required to restore a backup set, but without an up-to-date
signature, duplicity cannot append an incremental backup to an existing archive.

To save bandwidth, duplicity generates full signature sets and incremental signature sets. A
full signature set is generated for each full backup, and an incremental one for each
incremental backup. These start with duplicity-full-signatures and duplicity-new-signatures
respectively. These signatures will be stored both locally and remotely. The remote
signatures will be encrypted if encryption is enabled. The local signatures will not be
encrypted and stored in the archive dir (see --archive-dir ).

REQUIREMENTS
Duplicity requires a POSIX-like operating system with a python interpreter version 3.8+
installed. It is best used under GNU/Linux.

Some backends also require additional components (probably available as packages for your
specific platform):

Amazon Drive backend
python-requests - http://python-requests.org
python-requests-oauthlib - https://github.com/requests/requests-oauthlib

azure backend (Azure Storage Blob Service)
Microsoft Azure Storage Blobs client library for Python -
https://pypi.org/project/azure-storage-blob/

boto3 backend (S3 Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Storage) (default)
boto3 version 1.x - https://github.com/boto/boto3

box backend (box.com)
boxsdk - https://github.com/box/box-python-sdk

cfpyrax backend (Rackspace Cloud) and hubic backend (hubic.com)
Rackspace CloudFiles Pyrax API -
http://docs.rackspace.com/sdks/guide/content/python.html

dpbx backend (Dropbox)
Dropbox Python SDK - https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/sdk

gdocs gdata backend (legacy)
Google Data APIs Python Client Library - http://code.google.com/p/gdata-python-client/

gdocs pydrive backend(default)
see pydrive backend

gio backend (Gnome VFS API)
PyGObject - http://live.gnome.org/PyGObject
D-Bus (dbus)- http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus

lftp backend (needed for ftp, ftps, fish [over ssh] - also supports sftp, webdav[s])
LFTP Client - http://lftp.yar.ru/

MEGA backend (only works for accounts created prior to November 2018) (mega.nz)
megatools client - https://github.com/megous/megatools

MEGA v2 and v3 backend (works for all MEGA accounts) (mega.nz)
MEGAcmd client - https://mega.nz/cmd

multi backend
Multi -- store to more than one backend
(also see A NOTE ON MULTI BACKEND ) below.

ncftp backend (ftp, select via ncftp+ftp://)
NcFTP - http://www.ncftp.com/

OneDrive backend (Microsoft OneDrive)
python-requests-oauthlib - https://github.com/requests/requests-oauthlib

Par2 Wrapper Backend
par2cmdline - http://parchive.sourceforge.net/

pydrive backend
PyDrive -- a wrapper library of google-api-python-client -
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PyDrive
(also see A NOTE ON PYDRIVE BACKEND ) below.

rclone backend
rclone - https://rclone.org/

rsync backend
rsync client binary - http://rsync.samba.org/

ssh paramiko backend (default)
paramiko (SSH2 for python) - http://pypi.python.org/pypi/paramiko (downloads);
http://github.com/paramiko/paramiko (project page)
pycrypto (Python Cryptography Toolkit) - http://www.dlitz.net/software/pycrypto/

ssh pexpect backend(legacy)
sftp/scp client binaries OpenSSH - http://www.openssh.com/
Python pexpect module - http://pexpect.sourceforge.net/pexpect.html

swift backend (OpenStack Object Storage)
Python swiftclient module - https://github.com/openstack/python-swiftclient/
Python keystoneclient module - https://github.com/openstack/python-keystoneclient/

webdav backend
certificate authority database file for ssl certificate verification of HTTPS
connections - http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html
(also see A NOTE ON SSL CERTIFICATE VERIFICATION).
Python kerberos module for kerberos authentication -
https://github.com/02strich/pykerberos

MediaFire backend
MediaFire Python Open SDK - https://pypi.python.org/pypi/mediafire/

xorriso backend
xorriso - https://www.gnu.org/software/xorriso/

AUTHOR
Original Author - Ben Escoto <bescoto AT stanford.edu>

Current Maintainer - Kenneth Loafman <kenneth AT loafman.com>

Continuous Contributors
Edgar Soldin, Mike Terry
Most backends were contributed individually. Information about their authorship may be found
in the according file's header.
Also we'd like to thank everybody posting issues to the mailing list or on launchpad, sending
in patches or contributing otherwise. Duplicity wouldn't be as stable and useful if it
weren't for you.
A special thanks goes to rsync.net, a Cloud Storage provider with explicit support for
duplicity, for several monetary donations and for providing a special "duplicity friends"
rate for their offsite backup service. Email info AT rsync.net for details.

SEE ALSO
python(1), rdiff(1), rdiff-backup(1).

Version 2.1.4 March 31, 2024 DUPLICITY(1)

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