Re: [Duplicity-talk] Syntax of duplicity verify command

[edgar . soldin]

hey Kostas (again:)),

yeah duplicity's verify is actually a bastard command that verifies the 
possibility to restore _and_ allows to compare to the source folder. older 
versions did the second automatically, for newer versions you have to enable 
--compare-data for that.

the source folder argument is there and needed for the second part, that is why 
it is still needed.

the functionality should probably be separated into a new compare command in 
the future, but so far nobody did so.

..ede/duply.net

On 23.01.2017 21:16, Kostas Papadopoulos wrote:
> Dear duplicity devs & users,
> 
> If the duplicity "verify" command just validates the integrity of the backup 
> against the signatures of the sigtar files found at source_url, isn't then 
> the requirement of a second argument (target_directory) unnecessary and 
> confusing?
> 
> Currently, if the specified target_dir doesn't exist, then duplicity "verify" 
> exits with an error. If the specified target_dir is empty, it works fine. And 
> if the specified target_dir has other random files (unrelated to duplicity), 
> the number of "files compared" is somehow increased (e.g. from 75 to 140 in 
> the example below)
> 
> /root/docs was the backup original source dir
> /tmp/t is non-existant dir
> /tmp/tt is empty dir
> /tmp contains other stuff too
> 
>     address@hidden:/tmp# duplicity verify --name duply_test-local 
> --encrypt-key AABBCCDDEEFFAA --sign-key AABBCCDDEEFFAA --verbosity 4 
> file:///tmp/backup-test-local /root/docs
>     Local and Remote metadata are synchronized, no sync needed.
>     Last full backup date: Mon Jan 23 19:00:45 2017
>     GnuPG passphrase:
>     Verify complete: 77 files compared, 0 differences found.
>     address@hidden:/tmp# duplicity verify --name duply_test-local 
> --encrypt-key AABBCCDDEEFFAA --sign-key AABBCCDDEEFFAA --verbosity 4 
> file:///tmp/backup-test-local /tmp/t
>     Verify directory /tmp/t does not exist
>     address@hidden:/tmp# duplicity verify --name duply_test-local 
> --encrypt-key AABBCCDDEEFFAA --sign-key AABBCCDDEEFFAA --verbosity 4 
> file:///tmp/backup-test-local /tmp/tt
>     Local and Remote metadata are synchronized, no sync needed.
>     Last full backup date: Mon Jan 23 19:00:45 2017
>     GnuPG passphrase:
>     Verify complete: 75 files compared, 0 differences found.
>     address@hidden:/tmp# duplicity verify --name duply_test-local 
> --encrypt-key AABBCCDDEEFFAA --sign-key AABBCCDDEEFFAA --verbosity 4 
> file:///tmp/backup-test-local /tmp/
>     Local and Remote metadata are synchronized, no sync needed.
>     Last full backup date: Mon Jan 23 19:00:45 2017
>     GnuPG passphrase:
>     Verify complete: 140 files compared, 0 differences found.
> 
> I would imagine that a more readily understandable syntax would be a 
> duplicity "verify" command with just one argument (duplicity verify ... 
> source_url), and another duplicity "compare" command that would take two 
> arguments (duplicity compare ... source_url target_directory 
> [--compare-data]) and compare backup against the target_directory's files 
> size/date and optionally content (when used with --compare-data).
> 
> Thank you in advance for your consideration,
> KP
> 
> On 04/23/2015 03:12 AM, Kenneth Loafman wrote:
>> The signatures in the sigtar files.  Think of them as uber-large hashes.
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 5:25 PM, Kostas Papadopoulos <address@hidden 
>> <mailto:address@hidden>> wrote:
>>
>>     On 4/22/2015 2:51 PM, Kenneth Loafman wrote:
>>>     Actually, he has to use --compare-data for verify to look at the local 
>>> data, otherwise verify just validates that the backup is intact and is not 
>>> corrupted.
>>>
>>
>>     Thanks for the clarification, but then isn't the output of "verify" a 
>> bit misleading?
>>
>>         ...
>>         Last full backup date: Sun Apr  5 15:55:20 2015
>>         Verify complete: 73 files compared, 0 differences found.
>>         --- Finished state OK at 01:33:47.897 - Runtime 00:01:20.821 ---
>>
>>     Against what are those 73 files compared?
>>
>>     Br, KP
>>
>>
>