# Two computers connecting with the same username and hostname

**URL:** <https://kopia.discourse.group/t/two-computers-connecting-with-the-same-username-and-hostname/8739>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [December 9, 2025, 2:25pm UTC](https://kopia.discourse.group/t/two-computers-connecting-with-the-same-username-and-hostname/8739 "2025-12-09T14:25:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![eliyen](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/kopia.discourse.group/eliyen/32/1928_2.png) [@eliyen](https://kopia.discourse.group/u/eliyen)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2025, 2:25pm UTC](https://kopia.discourse.group/t/two-computers-connecting-with-the-same-username-and-hostname/8739/1 "2025-12-09T14:25:53Z")

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I understand from reading the documentation that multiple computers can back up to the same repository, but I’m wondering if there are any issues with multiple computers connecting with the same username and hostname.

I have a **desktop** and **laptop** and **one external drive** that can be plugged into either computer. I run KopiaUI on both the desktop and laptop. They both back up data from the same external drive.

All this works great, except when I look under the **Snapshots** tab in KopiaUI, there are **two** items for the same data. One with owner **user@desktop** and the other with **user@laptop**.

I see there’s an option to override the username and hostname when connecting to the repository. I’m thinking of using something like **user@desktop-or-laptop** so that the owner will be the same whether I’m backing up from the desktop or the laptop and thus there would only be one entry under the **Snapshots** tab.

My question is, will this lead to any problems? Thanks in advance for any guidance.

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**Author:** ![eliyen](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/kopia.discourse.group/eliyen/32/1928_2.png) [@eliyen](https://kopia.discourse.group/u/eliyen)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2025, 5:01pm UTC](https://kopia.discourse.group/t/two-computers-connecting-with-the-same-username-and-hostname/8739/2 "2025-12-10T17:01:32Z")

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I did some more reading of the documentation and saw this part about [maintenance](https://kopia.io/docs/advanced/maintenance/#maintenance-task-ownership):

> For correctness reasons, Kopia requires that no more than one instance of certain maintenance operations runs at any given time. To achieve that, one repository user@hostname is designated as the Maintenance Owner. Other repository users will not attempt to run maintenance automatically and the designated user will attempt to do so after holding an exclusive lock.

Given my above scenario with both **desktop** and **laptop** having the same username/hostname of **user@desktop-or-laptop** , would this result in conflicts/corruption running maintenance?

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**Author:** ![sfatula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@sfatula](https://kopia.discourse.group/u/sfatula)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2025, 5:07pm UTC](https://kopia.discourse.group/t/two-computers-connecting-with-the-same-username-and-hostname/8739/3 "2025-12-12T17:07:37Z")

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I connect and use user@computer without issues, works great. When I set up one of them, I didn’t like the name and forgot to change it to something more useful, so, just overriding the names.