Cfxtrjtrk

My final goal is to have a full backup of the system (like time-machine) and use it to reinstall it in case of disaster.
The intermediate goal is to backup all the working areas more times over the day.

Well, I followed all your suggestions:
removed deja-dup
installed Backups using apt-get
didn't backup the root (not yet applied the suggested patches to incorporate /)

but the result is always the same. it looks as there is some corrupted data: Note the the final message is always the same!!!!

Traceback (innermost last):

  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1555, in <module>

    with_tempdir(main)

  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1541, in with_tempdir

    fn()

  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1393, in main

    do_backup(action)

  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1511, in do_backup

    full_backup(col_stats)

  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 572, in full_backup

    globals.backend)

  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 454, in write_multivol

    (tdp, dest_filename, vol_num)))

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/asyncscheduler.py", line 146, in schedule_task

    return self.__run_synchronously(fn, params)

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/asyncscheduler.py", line 172, in __run_synchronously

    ret = fn(*params)

  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 453, in <lambda>

    vol_num: put(tdp, dest_filename, vol_num),

  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 342, in put

    backend.put(tdp, dest_filename)

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/backend.py", line 395, in inner_retry

    % (n, e.__class__.__name__, util.uexc(e)))

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/util.py", line 79, in uexc

    return ufn(unicode(e).encode('utf-8'))

 UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 37: ordinal not in range(128)

The configuration is now:

Folder to save: /etc /dev /run /bi /sbin /snap /sys /proc /opt /media /root /lib64 /lib /srv /var /usr /mnt

Folders to ignore: Trash, /backup, /git, /neo4j, /sys_backup /home

Storage location: Local folder - /sys_backup

Uninstall the snap version of deja-dup, and install the non-snap version. Use deja-dup to backup specific folders in your home directory (not all of / or ~/).

sudo snap remove deja-dup # remove the snap version

sudo apt-get update # update the software database

sudo apt-get install deja-dup # install deja-dup

Install timeshift and use it to backup system/OS files...

The closest thing to a Windows-like restore point is by using Timeshift. I use it to save snapshots to an external USB hard drive. Although it can, it's normally not used for backing up your /home directory, just system-level changes. Use Backups (Déjà Dup) for backing up /home files.

Timeshift is a system restore utility which takes snapshots

of the system at regular intervals. These snapshots can be restored

at a later date to undo system changes. Creates incremental snapshots

using rsync or BTRFS snapshots using BTRFS tools.

More information at https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift

Add the PPA and install with:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/ppa

sudo apt update

sudo apt install timeshift

Dejadup works fine for root. You just have to do it right.

https://askubuntu.com/a/130702/6045

I suggest you separate your system and user backups.

It would probably be helpful if the application detected this pattern and advised the user of this alternative method.