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I have heard that Duplicity is a nice tool for doing incremental backups.

The only thing I am concerned with is verification.

How does Duplicity check the backup for being consistent before it syncs it to a server? Does it actually do this?

It would not be nice to find oneself facing a corrupted backup file issue when trying to restore a backup.

As I understand, the basic workflow of Duplicity is the following:

  1. Generate a delta from a directory which has to be backed up;
  2. Sync this delta to a remote storage.

Is there any verification of this delta between 1 and 2?

P.S. I have found this, but it is used to see "what files, if any, have changed since the last backup" and not to verify the integrity and consistency of a backup file.

tshepang
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skanatek
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    Are you asking if it can check the local backup integrity **before** the sync or checking if the resulting synced backup is a flawless copy of the original backup? – Joao Figueiredo Mar 14 '12 at 15:16
  • I am asking if it can check the local backup integrity before the sync. – skanatek Mar 16 '12 at 11:36
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    Then no, Duplicity does not care for *what* it is sending, just that it's sent *correctly*. If the original backup is corrupt, the resulting synced backup will be corrupt. Duplicity does exactly what it's supposed to, sync. For backing up and backup consistency checks you'll have to rely on the backup tool itself. – Joao Figueiredo Mar 19 '12 at 14:28

1 Answers1

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of course can duplicity verify existing backups. it just does not do this as it assumes that you are sensitive about traffic costs (s3 etc.).

simply do as described in

P.S. I have found this, but it is used to see "what files, if any, have changed since the last backup" and not to verify the integrity and consistency of a backup file.

before the backup and conditionally start a full if that fails. be aware that the completre backup chain has to be downloaded for this so it will nearly double your traffic.

ede/duply.net

ede-duply.net
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