7

As the title suggests, I'd like to force Deja Dup to use a folder other than /tmp.

My backups fail due to size size restrictions, see bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/deja-dup/+bug/1033552

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

2
  • Still sitting without a backup solution. Any help that solves the question will be greatly appreciated.
    – Brendan
    Commented Oct 1, 2012 at 14:59
  • 1
    possible duplicate of Backup no longer working
    – hhlp
    Commented Dec 28, 2012 at 17:03

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
2

The above solution works, but is generally not a really good option if you just want to change the tmp-Folder of the deja-dup process! Also I wouldn't sacrifice tmpfs because of this issue.

Since deja-dup uses duplicity as its backend to make the actual backup, the problem has to be solved for duplicity. Duplicity uses the environmental variable TMPDIR which normally points to /tmp

To change the location of the TMPDIR for duplicity (deja-dup), simply open the terminal and run:

TMPDIR=/othervolume/otherfolder
export TMPDIR
deja-dup-preferences
0

1.disable tmpfs:

sed -i "s/^\(RAMTMP\=\).*/\1no/" /etc/default/rcS

2.reboot

3.make a new temp dir in the partition that have more space. eg I will use the home dir with the appropriate permissions for read and write, and made a symbolic link to /tmp

mkdir /home/tmp
chmod ugo+rw /home/tmp
ln -s /home/tmp /tmp

2
  • 2
    Thanks for your reply, however I DO NOT want to stop using tmpfs, rather I want to change the location that deja dup uses. I get a major performance boost using tmpfs and don't want to sacrifice that just to use deja dup.
    – Brendan
    Commented Sep 23, 2012 at 4:24
  • Not everybody puts /home into a different partition, mainly because it becomes a partitioning pain if you wrongly guessed the amount of space you will need. Can you modify this advice for people like me who like to let all the files compete for the space they need?
    – Hedley Finger
    Commented Apr 2, 2020 at 1:16
0

I found another way to define alternative tmp folder based on setting the temporary variable TMPDIR in the .desktop file when using Deja dup as snap.

  1. copy the shortcut file to user context avoiding to modify the default
cp /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/deja-dup_deja-dup.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
  1. edit the new desktop file in user context
$ vim ~/.local/share/applications/deja-dup_deja-dup.desktop
  1. in the desktop file modify the Exec line adding the TMPDIR (in two places, look for all the Exec= lines), the lines should look like as follows:
    Exec=env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/deja-dup_deja-dup.desktop TMPDIR=/othervolume/otherfolder /snap/bin/deja-dup --backup
  1. save, reload desktop environment (i.e. ALT+F2 r Enter) and test the new directory duplicity-xxxxx-tempdir is created within the new temporary folder while running backup

I had to do this to avoid the annoying situation where you get error "no space left" while doing backups of big files. Hope this helps someone else.

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