deja-dup asks for passphrase over and over again when doing incremental backup, never completes

[Olivier Tilloy]

I’ve been doing backups with deja-dup to an external HDD for several years without any issue. Yesterday though, after manually triggering a backup, deja-dup kept on asking me my passphrase over and over again, after which it would start the "analysis" phase again. The backup would never actually start.

I re-ran deja-dup from a terminal, and got the following output:

DUPLICITY: INFO 1
DUPLICITY: . GPG error detail: Traceback (most recent call last):
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1519, in <module>
DUPLICITY: . with_tempdir(main)
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1513, in with_tempdir
DUPLICITY: . fn()
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1370, in main
DUPLICITY: . do_backup(action)
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1391, in do_backup
DUPLICITY: . sync_archive(decrypt)
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1179, in sync_archive
DUPLICITY: . copy_to_local(fn)
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1124, in copy_to_local
DUPLICITY: . gpg.GzipWriteFile(src_iter, tdp.name, size=sys.maxsize)
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/gpg.py", line 395, in GzipWriteFile
DUPLICITY: . new_block = block_iter.next()
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/bin/duplicity", line 1104, in next
DUPLICITY: . self.fileobj.close()
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/dup_temp.py", line 226, in close
DUPLICITY: . assert not self.fileobj.close()
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/gpg.py", line 256, in close
DUPLICITY: . self.gpg_failed()
DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/gpg.py", line 223, in gpg_failed
DUPLICITY: . raise GPGError(msg)
DUPLICITY: . GPGError: GPG Failed, see log below:
DUPLICITY: . ===== Begin GnuPG log =====
DUPLICITY: . gpg: CAST5 encrypted data
DUPLICITY: . gpg: encrypted with 1 passphrase
DUPLICITY: . gpg: WARNING: encrypted message has been manipulated!
DUPLICITY: . ===== End GnuPG log =====
DUPLICITY: .
DUPLICITY: .

DUPLICITY: ERROR 31 GPGError
DUPLICITY: . GPGError: GPG Failed, see log below:
DUPLICITY: . ===== Begin GnuPG log =====
DUPLICITY: . gpg: CAST5 encrypted data
DUPLICITY: . gpg: encrypted with 1 passphrase
DUPLICITY: . gpg: WARNING: encrypted message has been manipulated!
DUPLICITY: . ===== End GnuPG log =====
DUPLICITY: .

After poking at different things (including entirely deleting ~/.cache/deja-dup), I tried backing up to a new folder on the same external HDD, and the backup completed successfully (obviously it had to do a completely new backup, which took longer).

So it looks like the previous backup was somehow corrupted, though I have no idea how that happened.

In any case, deja-dup should detect that error condition and display a useful error message, instead of asking for the passphrase over and over again.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: deja-dup 34.0-1ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-25.30-generic 4.2.6
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-25-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Mon Feb 1 10:58:22 2016
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-11-12 (810 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
SourcePackage: deja-dup
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to wily on 2015-11-01 (91 days ago)

[Naël (nathanael-naeri)]

Other users have reported that Déjà Dup repeatedly prompts for the passphrase over a GPG error (although not necessarily the same as yours) during incremental backups, and only successfully completes full backups. See the following bug report and add duplicate status if appropriate.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/deja-dup/+bug/989750

[Naël (nathanael-naeri)]

On second thought, not necessarily the same bug since it's a different GPG error (although it results in the same behavior of Déjà Dup regardless of the specifics of GPG error)

[Curtis Schroeder (publicpanther)]

I have encountered this problem today. I verified I was getting a GPG error by issuing the command
'duplicity list-current-files file://<my_file_path>' from the command line.

Using the information here (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/DejaDup/Help/Restore/WorstCase) I was able to ascertain that I could successfully decrypt the latest difftar file from two days ago, but not the duplicity-new-signatures.*.sigtar file from the same date. Here is the output of the gpg command trying to decrypt the sigtar file:
gpg: AES encrypted data
gpg: encrypted with 1 passphrase
gpg: block_filter 0xf01fd0: read error (size=16104,a->size=16104)
gpg: block_filter 0xf1aad0: read error (size=9640,a->size=9640)
gpg: WARNING: encrypted message has been manipulated!
gpg: block_filter: pending bytes!
gpg: block_filter: pending bytes!

[Curtis Schroeder (publicpanther)]

I have encountered this problem today using Ubuntu Gnome 16.04. I verified I was getting a GPG error by issuing the command
'duplicity list-current-files file://<my_file_path>' from the command line.

Using the information here (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/DejaDup/Help/Restore/WorstCase) I was able to ascertain that I could successfully decrypt the latest difftar file from two days ago, but not the duplicity-new-signatures.*.sigtar file from the same date. Here is the output of the gpg command trying to decrypt the sigtar file:
gpg: AES encrypted data
gpg: encrypted with 1 passphrase
gpg: block_filter 0xf01fd0: read error (size=16104,a->size=16104)
gpg: block_filter 0xf1aad0: read error (size=9640,a->size=9640)
gpg: WARNING: encrypted message has been manipulated!
gpg: block_filter: pending bytes!
gpg: block_filter: pending bytes!

[Curtis Schroeder (publicpanther)]

What would be useful is a way to roll back the the previous, good backup and discard the corrupted one.

[Vej (vej)]

This bug might be happening, after an accidental password change with bug #918489 which has been fixed recently. Could anyone of the affected please try if the fix of bug #918489 fixes this one as well?

Thanking you in anticipation

Vej

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Déjà Dup because there has been no activity for 60 days.]