---
title: Charmhub | Deploy Duplicity using Charmhub - The Open Operator Collection
description: Deploy the latest version of Duplicity on any cloud.
url: https://charmhub.io/duplicity/docs/t-getting-started
---

# Duplicity

[Canonical BootStack Charmers](https://charmhub.io/publisher/bootstack-charmers "View all packages from Canonical BootStack Charmers")

* [Canonical BootStack Charmers](https://charmhub.io/publisher/bootstack-charmers "View all packages from Canonical BootStack Charmers")

Platform:

22.04

20.04

stable 3

```
juju deploy duplicity
```

[Learn to deploy on juju >](https://juju.is/docs/juju/manage-applications)

---

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[Join the discussion](https://discourse.charmhub.io/)

# Getting Started

## Simple deployment

This will get duplicity deployed on whatever deployed charm you want. Here, we see
it being related to the ubuntu charm.

```
juju deploy ubuntu
juju deploy duplicity
juju add-relation duplicity ubuntu
```

However, we will need to fill out various other, required configs, depending on the backend type selected.

## Local file backups

This will backup a selected directory to the local unit.

```
juju config duplicity \
    backend=file \
    remote_backup_url=file:///home/me/backups
    aux_backup_dir=/path/to/back/up
```

## SCP/Rsync/SFTP Backups

Using the backends scp, rsync, and sftp require, at minimum, the following options to be set.

```
juju config duplicity \
    backend=scp \
    remote_backup_url=my.host:22/my_backups
    known_host_key='my.host,10.10.10.2 ssh-rsa AAABBBCCC' \
    private_ssh_key="$(base64 my_priv_id)"
```

Alternatively, you can use `remote_password=password` instead of the `private_ssh_key` option if you prefer
password authentication.

## S3 Backups

The following will backup to S3 buckets. This configuration requires an IAM account
access and secret key to be passed into the config.

```
juju config duplicity \
    backend=s3 \
    remote_backup_url=s3:my.aws.com/bucket_name/prefix \
    aws_access_key_id=my_aws_key \
    aws_secret_access_key=my_aws_secret
```

## Encryption

To encrypt your backups, you can use symmetric encryption using a passed in password or
encrypt the backup with a GPG key. Alternative to these methods, you can ignore encryption
entirely.

```
# Symmetric password encryption
juju config duplicity encryption_passphrase=my_passphrase

# Asymmetric GPG encryption
juju config duplicity gpg_public_key=MY_GPG_KEY

# Disable encryption (not recommended)
juju config duplicity disable_encryption=True
```

## Setting Periodic Backups

The big draw of this charm is being able to periodically backup a directory. By default,
the charm will only backup manually, i.e. through the `do-backup` action. To enable
periodic backups, set `backup_frequency` to any of the following:

* hourly
* daily
* weekly
* monthly
* any valid cron schedule string

## Setting Retention

The charm supports periodically cleaning up stale backups. A retention period can
be set with `retention_period` and the charm will periodically delete backups older
than this time period. By default, the charm’s retention policy is set to manual
and can be set as follows:

* manual (*default*)
* h (number of hour(s) eg. 3h, 60h, 10000h)
* d (number of day(s) eg. 1d, 7d, 30d, 100000d)

How frequently old backups are deleted can be set with `deletion_frequency`
which by default is set to daily.

* daily (runs at 23:00) (*default*)
* hourly (runs at the 40th minute)
* any valid cron schedule string

## Adding NRPE Checks for alerting

Adding NRPE checks allows for alerting when a periodic backup or deletion fails to complete.

```
juju deploy nrpe
juju add-relation nrpe ubuntu       # required on host
juju add-relation nrpe duplicity
```

## Cleaning up backups

Deletion commands such as `remove-older-than`, `remove-all-but-n-full` and
`remove-all-inc-of-but-n-full` can be used with run action and a specified
parameter.
For example:
`juju run-action duplicity/0 remove-older-than time=2022-10-02T19:44:00+00:00`
where time follows the same w3 standard as duplicity and yaml
`juju run-action duplicity/0 remove-all-but-n-full count=1`

---