trouble restoring home directory from backup

Question

I was using an old version of Ubuntu, made a backup of /home/user on an external HD, installed the much newer Ubuntu 17.04 (formatting the old machine), and now am trying to restore /home/user.

I can restore single files and directories using the command

duplicity restore --no-encryption --file-to-restore home/user/path-to-file file:///media/user/HD/ /home/user/filename

However, when I try restore /home/user using

duplicity --no-encryption file:///media/user/HD/ /home/user/

I get the error

Restore destination directory /home/user already exists. Will not overwrite.

And when I try restore /home/user to a new directory,

duplicity --no-encryption file:///media/user/Maxtor/ /home/user/RESTORED/

(where RESTORED is a new directory) it gives me a whole bunch of errors of the form

Error '[Errno 36] File name too long: '/home/user/RESTORED/home/user/.kde/share/...

Answer 1

You can rename your current /home/user with sudo mv /home/user /home/user1 and then restore with your first command.