I carefully saved my data with Deja-Dup Backups on an external drive, especially my Thunderbird one. But before I gave the restore process a try, my laptop crashed, and I got a new desktop PC.
Every time I tried the automatic restoration function of Deja-Dup Backups for Thunderbird data, it gave me this error message:
Could not restore the following files. Please make sure you are able to write to them:
I tried to run Deja-Dup Backups as sudo, but it doesn’t change the outcomes. As it doesn’t work (no old emails or personal folders in Thunderbird), I tried to restore the Deja-Dup Backups files to a folder in my Home, then to copy and paste the content to /home/davidgb/.cache/thunderbird and to /home/davidgb/.thunderbird
Changing of directory doesn’t seem to impact the issue, as Backups gives me the same error message with this list of files:
Could not restore the following files. Please make sure you are able to write to them:
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/Mail/Local Folders/Travail DGB.sbd/NS Administratif.msf
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/Mail/pop.gmail.com/Inbox
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/Mail/pop.gmail.com/Inbox.msf
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/Mail/pop.gmail.com/Junk
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/calendar-data/cache.sqlite-wal
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/datareporting/aborted-session-ping
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/folderCache.json
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/places.sqlite-wal
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/prefs.js
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/session.json
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/session.json.backup
/home/davidgb/Downloads/Thunderbird resto/24d13kxu.default-release/storage-sync-v2.sqlite-wal
But doing that has created another problem, as Thunderbird cannot launch anymore and gives the message:
Hey,
I’ve just tried that with my backup of the thunderbird-flatpak into some directory and it worked. Are you also using the thunderbird flatpak? And which version of Deja-Dup do you use? I have just checked and the one in the fedora-repos is two major versions behind - maybe you could update to the flatpak from flathub if that’s not what you’ve installed already?
Then maybe try to restore it again, but without sudo and to a clean directory that you have write-permission for.
The issue with thunderbird not starting anymore likely originates in it’s data directories currently being broken (new and old things copied over each other etc…), you’ll probably have to completely remove them, then restore them from the backup, and only then try to launch it again.
You could also check which back-end your version of Deja-Dup is using (duplicity or restic), and try restoring with the back-end CLI tool. If still not working, maybe the error messages would be more detailed.
However, Deja-Dup still gives me the same error message and tells me to check if I can write in this directory.
@marreitin, I tried to uninstall Thunderbird rpm and install from Flat-Hub the latest version 128.11.1esr. But now, when I try to launch TB, I got this message:
mkdir(/home/davidgb/.var/app/org.mozilla.Thunderbird/data): No such file or directory
@tqcharm, how do you know which back-end you use? If I type “restic” or “duplicity” in a terminal, it offers to install the packages…
It depends on the app version. IIRC, version 46 (from Fedora repos) still uses duplicity, and restic is optional (experimental), whereas with version 48 (available from Flathub) rustic is the default backend.
You can find it out from the GUI app, by going to preferences. If there’s a Lab tab available, then the app is using duplicity (unless the experimental option is ticked). Otherwise it should be using restic.
Are you using DejaDup packaged as Flatpak? That would explain why neither backend is available as RPM.
I have the Labs tab where I can decide to “Use Restic instead of Duplicity”, but this option is not activated.
When I check the app manager, I find out that my DejaDup is from a Flatpak from registry.fedoraproject.org
May I try to activate the option in my version 46 to enable Restic, or do I need to find a way to download the latest version? Why do you think @tqcharm that it may solve the problem?
What I can think of is to install duplicity (with sudo dnf install duplicity), then from the command line try to restore the backup (with duplicity restore <source> <target)>, see man page for details).
If it doesn’t work, you could also try to uninstall the DejaDup Flatpak app from fedora remote and install it from flathub, then try restoring.
I installed Duplicity, and looked for understanding the command line, but:
I am not sure to understand how to give a source URL when my backup files are on an external drive. My backup directory is /run/media/me/DGB Vault/Fedora BackUp
How do I deal with the spaces in the directory?
I tried this command line to check on my backup files unsuccessfully:
me@fedora:~$ duplicity list-current-files file:///media/me/DGB_Vault/Fedora_BackUp/
Giving up after 1 attempts. FileNotFoundError: No such file or directory
The URL format looks correct. The path itself doesn’t, though (see in your last post /media/.. vs /run/media/.., Fedora_BackUp with or without underscore).
Make sure to put your paths between quotes or use escaping if there are spaces in it.
I don’t think there is anything wrong in what you’re doing. Looking up online for librsync errors in connection to duplicity, it seems that your data got corrupted at a certain point in time, and since the backup is incremental, the restore now fails.
If you’re willing to give it a try and consider it’s worth the effort, after some online research you might find guidance with duplicity commands that would indicate when did the corruption first take place, and then try restoring the last available backup before that specific date. Good look if you decide to go that route (you’ll probably need it ).
As a side note, it’s possible that your system failing is a result of some previous malfunctioning, which could have also caused the corrupted data being backed up. The DejaDup maintainer seems to have decided to switch the default backup tool to restic because they consider it, among others, more robust than duplicity, according to this post.
Have you tried to restore single files from inside Thunderbird profile instead of the whole “/home”? The only files you actually need are inside the “mail” subdirectory. Once you recover those, basically text files, you can merge your email in a new profile.
In other words, you can create a new Thunderbird profile, set the email accounts then take the previous email files and merge those inside the new mail directory. I have done that a couple of times.
It should be something like:
“home/me/.thunderbird/24d13kxu.default-release/mail/[your email server]/Inbox -
Inbox.mfs (two files) - Sent - Sent.mfs (two files)”.
In all you need only those 4 files.
On a side note.
You should not save the whole “/home” because there is a lot of useless stuff there, depending on your settings, for example the whole browser cache. Personally I save “/documents” and “/.thunderbird”.
Backups fail so it is a good idea to have two different backup sets. In my case I place Dejadup backups on GDrive and from time to time I copy the same directories on an external drive, manually. Those backups can be months old but when … hits the fan it is better than no backup.
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