Have kopia recognize old backups

General Topics
1

I have two SSD.
SSD 1 contains my data.
SSD 2 contains the OS.
I backuped up the data in SSD 1 into an external SSD with Kopia UI.
I reinstalled the OS in SSD (Fedora 41).
I reinstalled Kopia.
I can access the repository in the external SSD.
However, Kopia doesn’t show the “Snapshot now” button anymore

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image1001×236 21 KB

It’s like Kopia is not recognizing that the SSD 1 with my data is still there.
I don’t want to backup everything from anew.
The data are very big.
I would like to continue with the incremental backup.
How can I do it?

2

Most likely either user or machine name are different now.

You can see your all old snapshots when you choose All snapshots instead of default Local snapshots

You have few options:

  1. Connect to your repository as original user@host
  2. Change your user and host names to match kopia values
  3. Change old snapshots user@host to match your current values. Use kopia snapshot move-history
1 Like
3

Connect to your repository as original user@host

How can I do that?

Change your user and host names to match kopia values

How can I find the kopia values?

Change old snapshots user@host to match your current values. Use kopia snapshot move-history

That looks complicated. I would like the least intrusive stuff without touching the repo

4

To connect as different user@host use advanced options when you connect.

List all snapshots to see what values you used before - kopia snapshot list -all or choose All snapshots in GUI.

5

As you can see from this screenshot, the values coincide, but there is still no “Snapshot now” button

[ABRIDGED AS IT CONTAINED PERSONAL INFORMATION]

6

Also

❯ kopia snapshot list -all
kopia: error: flag 'show-identical' cannot be repeated, try --help
7

check exact syntax in docs

re your matching user@host - of course it matches:) as you connected as this user@host - this is what kopia does by default. Hence when connecting use advanced options to change it.

you can connect to given repository as any user@host - this is how you can distinguish snapshots’ sets from different computers. In your case it is like you have backups from computer1 but now you connected to repo from computer2. So local snapshots set is different - nothing defined for computer2 to backup yet -so no button.

You have to use one of the options I posted in my first post to rectify it.

8

The repository was created as raffaele@fedora

USERNAME@fedora:/mnt/dataint/data
  2025-01-22 09:43:30 CET kfd561dea15f89ef45312e95d0bb9eb2c 336.7 GB drwxr-xr-x files:249863 dirs:28857 (latest-1,hourly-1,daily-1,weekly-1,monthly-1,annual-1)

and my username is raffaele and my hostname is fedora.

I don’t understand what you mean by connecting with a different user and hostname.

What user and hostname should I use?

9

what does

kopia snapshot list -a

show

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10 
➜  kopia snapshot list -a
USERNAME@fedora:/mnt/dataint/data
  2025-01-22 09:43:30 CET ALPHANUMERIC_CODE 336.7 GB drwxr-xr-x files:249863 dirs:28857 (latest-1,hourly-1,daily-1,weekly-1,monthly-1,annual-1)
11

I disconnected the repository and re-connected again.

It is now working and the “Snapshot now” button is showing up.

I didn’t understand that username and host were tied to the connection.

Thank you very much, this is saving me so much time

1 Like
12

Glad it works at last:)

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