25

I have setup my backup folder and put the Automatic backups switch to on. In the Overview tab I cant press the "Back Up Now" because it is grayed out.

I am using Ubuntu 11.10 and here is the content of ~/.gconf/apps/deja-dup/%gconf.xml :

$ cat  ~/.gconf/apps/deja-dup/%gconf.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gconf>
<entry name="delete-after" mtime="1328975617" type="int" value="7"/>
<entry name="periodic-period" mtime="1328975577" type="int" value="1"/>
<entry name="exclude-list" mtime="1328975572" type="list" ltype="string">
    <li type="string">
        <stringvalue>/home/r2d2/.local/share/Trash</stringvalue>
    </li>
</entry>
<entry name="periodic" mtime="1328988637" type="bool" value="true"/>
<entry name="backend" mtime="1328975520" type="string">
    <stringvalue>file</stringvalue>
</entry>
</gconf>
01BTC10
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7 Answers7

25

Shorter version

Ctrl+Alt+t to open a terminal

pkill deja-dup

Re-run the "Backups" program and try again.

Tim Abell
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    I also had to pkill duplicity before I could run a backup. – crockeea Apr 17 '19 at 18:18
  • Ohhh. Perfect. I was getting an error when backing up automatically (like this one: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1127293/error-using-backups-in-ubuntu-18-10-it-was-deja-dup) which I could not resolve. Then I noticed the buttons are greyed out - followed your advice, everything works again now! – Janina Aug 20 '19 at 07:07
18

In my case, there was no backup running but deja-dup had a couple of things running.

I did a ps -eaf | grep dup and killed the pids. Then I started DejaDup from the menu and the button was active.

Eric Carvalho
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Indigo42
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    I used killall deja-dup. My problem was that i used an external drive, and i'ts not automounted, so the program startup didn't read any backup source. What it's a bit surprising it's that it can backup once you mount because the monitor, but don't enable Restore button. – m3nda Oct 05 '15 at 07:44
8

That button is grayed out when a backup (or restore) is already in progress. Maybe one was running in the background?

Is the button enabled now?

Michael Terry
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  • I found the problem. I could not make any backup on my backup drive because it was created with an earlier install. So I have no write access to this disk. I am still trying to figure how to fix this. I tried chmod and chown without success. I am locked out of my backup drive... – 01BTC10 Mar 18 '12 at 15:45
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    For me, it was the DejaDup popup window asking me to enter a passphrase to encrypt my first backup with. – Nemo Sep 01 '12 at 18:19
  • Thanks, good to know. Since there is no progress bar it is impossible to tell. I corroborated this by looking at the running processes. – alfC Jul 12 '16 at 19:05
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    Yes, DejaDup has a horrible UI and doesn't tell you when it's running, much less report progress. – Cerin Oct 27 '16 at 19:38
  • Same issue. For me, there was a pop-window asking for entering a password minimized, which I did not notice, and it seems the main backup interface was waiting on me. – M J Jul 08 '17 at 01:55
8
ps aux | grep deja
kill <pid of "deja-dup --backup --auto">

Immediately the backup button becomes active.

This should be reported as a bug as the frontend should either have a button to terminate running backups or automatically reconcile concurrent backups.

Eric Carvalho
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MrRobot
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  • Doing this solved my problem too. Interesting to note that no backup had occurred for almost 2 weeks even though daily backups were selected. In addition, within a few seconds of killing deja-dup --backup, a new backup started automatically and continued to normal completion. It will be interesting to see if the normal auto backup completes normally tomorrow. – rickhg12hs Jun 12 '17 at 07:10
6

My 'back up now' button was disabled. In my case the problem was that when I opened the Deja Dup config, the 'storage' option was set to 'Ubuntu One', and it opened another window for logging into that.

I changed the storage setting to a local drive, but it took me a while to realise I had to cancel the Ubuntu One login before Deja Dup would allow me to run a backup.

Greg Ball
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0

It might also be that you don't have to kill the process, because it is already doing what you want it to do in the background. I just opened the destination folder and I'm seeing that lots of backup files are being created.

Papa Stahl
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0

I ended the process found in the system monitor and the buttons immediately 'ungreyed'. They way I got into the problem was canceling a backup to postpone figuring out a password for it. I had shut down the machine several times since then but it was still stuck there I guess.

Spidyplant
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