Duplicati and SFTP

I use Duplicati to backup my computer and my folks’ computers to my NAS. For now, I found Duplicati very easy to setup and it works on Linux, Mac and Windows and it uses a web browser to manage it.

To install Duplicati in Linux, I posted the Duplicati in Fedora. Make sure that download the correct binary and do exactly what the post-instruction. We want Duplicati to run automatically via the systemd and to accomplish that we need to create a systemd unit as shown in the post. Also, this post assumption is we have an SFTP server running already. Last week, I posted Chroot Directory for SFTP that I use for my NAS. You don’t have to follow it, but this post is to use the SFTP to transfer our encrypted backup to the NAS.

Once Duplicati has been installed, open any web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8200 to get access Duplicati web interface. If you open Duplicati for the first time, you will be greeted by setting up a password. Please do so to protect your Duplicati instance. Once done protecting your Dupicati, click on the + Add backup on the left pane menu and click Next as shown in Figure 1.

The next page is the General backup settings.

1. Give the backup profile a name
2. Add a description that makes sense
3. Select a cipher algorithm from the Encryption drop-down menu
4. Enter the passphrase. This will be used to encrypt the backup before transferring it to the destination
5. Click on Next

At the Backup destination page.

1. Select SFTP (SSH) from the Storage Type drop-down menu
2. Enter the IP address of the SFTP server in the Server and port field
3. Enter the path where the backup will be stored
4. Enter the SFTP username in the Username field
5. Enter the password of the user in the Password field
6. Click on Test connection
   1. Accept the SSH finger print by selecting Yes
7. If the Test connection is worked, click on Next

Once in the Source data page.

1. Select the directory or files you would like to backup
   1. Deselect the directories or files you want to exclude from being backed up
2. Click on Next when done

The Schedule page

1. Setup the backup
2. Click Next when done

Backup Retention and volume size

1. Set the volume size. The default is 50MB
2. Select the Backup retention from the drop-down menu
3. When done, click on Save

Just like that we are done. Once back to the Home dashboard, you can click on Run to run the very first backup. This first backup usually takes awhile depending on the size of what is being backed up.

Cheers!