Bug: v0.19.0: Global Policies Cannot Be Used Without A 'repository.config'

[97b4958b055b]

CLI/AppImage

All repositories have a ${HOME}/.config/kopia/$customRepoNameHere.config. Following this example from the Kopia docs to ensure no interfering ID10T errors, I execute

kopia policy set --global --compression="zstd-better-compression"

Result:

kopia policy set --global --compression="zstd-better-compression" ||  nowutc
ERROR open repository: repository is not connected. See https://kopia.io/docs/repositories/
20250430T055955UTC

However after setting a repository.config:

ls -l ${HOME}/.config/kopia/repository.config && \
kopia policy set --global --compression="zstd-better-compression" && nowutc
.rw------- 479 user 30 Apr 06:07 /home/user/.config/kopia/repository.config
Setting policy for (global)
 - setting compression algorithm to zstd-better-compression
20250430T060954UTC

I restart Kopia. Only 3 of the 4 repos have the defined compression applied & I’m more than sure that’s because I’d already applied them individually to the then 2 of 3 repos yesterday:

kopia policy show --config-file=$conf "${HOME}/sample" | grep Compression && nowutc
Compression disabled.
20250430T063344UTC

Related:

Bug: v0.19.0: CLI/GUI/AppImage: repository.config Over-writes Without Warning

So the esteemed minds behind Kopia didn’t bother to write a conditional check against an existing repository.conf and autogen a repository-N.config accordingly. Spectacular. Apparently end users are expected to know beforehand that conf files will be over written unless using --config-file during kopia repo create. I’ve successfully connected three file system repos all under the same volume. Here’s a template: # define conf="$HOME/.config/kopia/fs-000-repo.config" passwd="secret" path="/medi…

Bug: v0.19.0: CLI/AppImage: Global Policies Not Applied

I created a file system repo. I applied my global policies. eg: kopia policy set --config-file="$conf" --global --compression="zstd-better-compression" I restart the appimage. I create another file system repo. I restart the appimage. I close all the Kopia windows puked up on my screen. I check the first file system repo. Applied policies are present. I check the second file system repo. No applied policies are present. I reapply global policies using the --config-file="$conf" of the s…

Understanding how Kopia UI manages multiple repositories

I’m relatively new to Kopia and initially could not understand how the Kopia UI app interfaces with multiple repositories. Eg, in windows, when I right click on the Kopia icon in my taskbar, I was seeing multiple repos listed, some of which it could not connect to. I couldn’t find this documented, but after playing around for a while and reviewing log files, I figured it out & wanted to document my findings. This is based on my testing on the Windows platform: When you start up KopiaUI, it …

[alexbarton]

I think you are misguided what “global” in the policy configuration stands for: It means “global for this repository, not bound to any path in particular”.

But as the policy is stored in the repository, there is no concept of a “common global policy for all repositories I create”.

You have to configure your policies for each individual repository.