Duplicity restore produces an error "No backup chains found"

Question

I'm testing duplicity's restore functionality:

duplicity restore file://fullSystemBackup/ backupOutput

Which produces an error of:

Local and Remote metadata are synchronized, no sync needed.
Last full backup date: none
GnuPG passphrase for decryption: 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1546, in <module>
    with_tempdir(main)
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1540, in with_tempdir
    fn()
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1391, in main
    do_backup(action)
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1468, in do_backup
    restore(col_stats)
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 731, in restore
    restore_get_patched_rop_iter(col_stats)):
  File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 753, in restore_get_patched_rop_iter
    backup_chain = col_stats.get_backup_chain_at_time(time)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/collections.py", line 971, in get_backup_chain_at_time
    raise CollectionsError("No backup chains found")
CollectionsError: No backup chains found

What does this error mean?

Answer 1

The path in file://fullSystemBackup/ should be an absolute path...

So I did file://"$PWD"/fullSystemBackup/...

Answer 2

There's a missing '/' in the source uri, after 'file:'

Instead of:

duplicity restore file://fullSystemBackup/ backupOutput

It has to be:

duplicity restore file:///fullSystemBackup/ backupOutput

Btw, this Last full backup date: none was a clue that something was wrong with the source

Answer 3

I was getting the same error when running

sudo duplicity --file-to-restore home/tobin/build/imgs file:///mnt/xhd/ /home/tobin/build/imgs

For my system at least file:// should point to the directory 'duplicity'. So the correct command was

sudo duplicity --file-to-restore home/tobin/build/imgs file:///mnt/xhd/duplicity /home/tobin/build/imgs