Deja-dup repeatedly asks encryption password

Question

Folks,

I have been in trouble with deja-dup, Ubuntu backup utility. It asks encryption password every time when back up starts. I entered every related passwords (server's one, client's one, and all things I think related), but it does not help. After entering encryption password, deja-dup works for some time and asks password again.

I expected this symptom has been solved in 14.04, but unforatunately deja-dup in 14.04 has exactly the same case.

Here is my environment of backup ...

My laptop computer (ThinkPad X220) is scheduled to be backed up files under my home directory in every week. The destination of backup is my office computer (running Ubuntu 12.04). This backup is made using ssh connection (so, selection of backup style in deja-dup is "ssh").

Help, suggestion and answers appreciated.

Answer 1

If you run Deja-Dup from a terminal, you may be able to get more info on the problem:

export DEJA_DUP_DEBUG=1
deja-dup --backup

In my particular case, it turned out that there was a stale lock file preventing GnuPG from working at all. Deleting ~/.gnupg/gnupg_spawn_agent_sentinel.lock solved the issue for me.

Answer 2

I had a similar problem with deja-dup running on Ubuntu 14.04. I found that these directories in my home folder were owned by root.

• .dbus
• .gnupg
• .gvfs
• .rnd

After I changed the ownership of those directories and their contents to me, deja-dup was able to create an encrypted backup of my home directory.

Answer 3

I also faced this annoying problem and it is still an open bug (here is the report)

Changing the path/name of the backup folder solved the issue for me.

Answer 4

Following @Ponkadoodle's answer to debug he problem I only found a vacuous stack trace due to an EOFError with the text Compressed file ended before the end-of-stream marker was reached.

What actually helped was deleting the directory ~/.cache/deja-dup/[32 digit hex]. The backup started immediately afterwards finally succeeded. The directory was recreated by Déjà Dup, so the hex string seems more like an identifier than a random name.

I also found that my .gnupg directory was owned by root. I changed that in accordance to @Robert C.'s answer. While it did not solve the problem it might have caused it, so better check all mentioned directories.

Answer 5

I got around this on Ubuntu 24.10 by running duplicity from the command line using the following command:

duplicity backup --no-encryption /home/[user] file:///media/[user]/5751575819445DF6/dup

The target URL is pointing to a (newly created) directory on an external hard drive. The source directory is simply the user's home directory. So these paths would need to be altered to suit the particular environment. However note that the target path must be a URL, not just a file path.

I didn't try it, but it might have worked in Deja Dup.

It remains to be seen, of course, what will happen the next time I do a backup.

It's really annoying that this problem is coming up over and over again.

Answer 6

deja-dup uses duplicity, so perhaps there is an option in the gui to turn off encryption?

For example, with a duplicity command you'd turn off encryption this way:

duplicity --no-ecryption --verbosity 8 /home/user/folder-to-backup/ file:///home/user/backup/destination-folder/

I realize this doesn't address your question perfectly, but sense no one else has tried, I thought I'd say something. Turning encryption off might not be acceptable, but I suspect it would prevent that prompting you're trying to avoid.

Answer 7

Here's what I did:

I formatted and renamed my external USB disk and then selected it under "Storage location."

Also, this time I chose the option "Allow to restore files without password."

I hope this helps.

Answer 8

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but...

To reset the password (yes, I have found a way to reset deja-dup password.) you must simply enter your deja-dup folder and delete EVERY SINGLE BACKUP. On it's next attempt to backup, it should ask you for a NEW password.

Cheers!