Please improve scheduler (catch up on missed jobs)

owl     Apr 10 10:12AM 2018 GUI

I use duplicacy on my macbook and want to guarantee 1 backup per day.

But unfortunately duplicacy does not catch up on missed jobs when the computer was off during the scheduled backup time.

If I configure duplicacy to backup at 4am, and the computer is never on at that time, then no backup will ever happen...

The correct behavior (which all other backup tools implement) is to perform the backup as soon as the computer is turned on, when any jobs have been missed during the downtime.


gchen    Apr 10 8:53PM 2018

Are you running the latest 2.1.0 version? I think at least this version should get it right.


owl    Apr 15 9:07AM 2018

I was running 2.1.0 Beta 10.

Now I re-downloaded from the website and the "About" dialog doesn't show a version number anymore (but the titlebar says 2.1.0).

I'll see if this one works better and report back.

PS: It would be nice if you could add an auto-updater, or at least notification about new versions.


owl    Apr 19 6:07AM 2018

Still doesn't work here.

Schedule is set to: First backup at 5am, then every 6h.

When I boot the computer at 9am, backup does not start immediately.


gchen    Apr 19 9:14PM 2018

I agree that if the computer wakes up at 9am then the overdue 5am backup should be started immediately. This is the current behavior.

However, I am not sure if the am backup should be performed at all when the computer boots up at 9am. This is equivalent to the question of whether or not to start a backup immediately if the scheduled time has passed when one is setting up a new backup job. Some users may want this, but others may disagree.


owl    Apr 21 8:57PM 2018

I think it should at least be an option.

Also can the GUI please display the timestamp of the last successful backup. Ideally directly in the menubar dropdown (like Arq does) and in "xx hours ago" format.


gchen    Apr 23 10:37AM 2018

I can add this option and make it configurable by a Windows registry value or a macOS user default. Would this work for you?

As for the last backup time, I think showing it on the per-job configuration page is better (in case you have multiple jobs).


owl    Apr 23 11:40AM 2018

Yes, macOS user default would work fine for me. (though I'd rather suggest to make it a checkbox in the GUI, otherwise people won't know it exists?)

I agree that showing the last backup time on the job page makes sense, I think ideally it should be in both places (on the job page, and in the menubar dropdown).

Having the job list directly in the dropdown, with their last backup time, and information such as duration/changed files, etc., would feel the most natural to me.

In a nutshell: Relevant info about the last backup run should be available at a glance in the dropdown. The jobs page should also show that info, plus the overall job stats (total backup size, chart of average runtime, chart of size growth over time, etc.).