[Duplicity-talk] restore ${HOME} howto

[Tom Roche]

summary: I have questions ("a"-"d" below) regarding how best to do my
first duplicity restore, esp regarding the non-duplicity-specific
portions of the process.

details:

>From the various duplicity docs, I believe I understand the parts of the
backup-restore process that solely involve duplicity. However I have not
seen the complete process illustrated, so would appreciate help, esp
with the non-duplicity system-level tasks involved. To be specific:

I have hostname=FOO running ubuntu lucid, on which I am user=foo.
I regularly back FOO up to an external HD. FOO needs serviced, which
will take at least a week. My GF has a hostname=BAR, also running
ubuntu lucid, on which I am user=bar. She will allow me to use BAR
while FOO is offline, so I want to transfer FOO:/home/foo to
BAR:/home/bar. I'm guessing the way to do this is

0 Ensure ubuntu and duplicity are uptodate on both FOO and BAR.

1 Backup FOO:/home/foo with

address@hidden:~$ duplicity ${HOME} file:///media/HD/FOO/home/foo

2 Restore with

address@hidden:~$ sudo duplicity file:///media/HD/FOO/home/foo ${HOME}-restore

3 Replace BAR:/home/bar with BAR:/home/bar-restore. Since BAR has
  sufficient space, I'm planning to do

address@hidden:~$ sudo -i
address@hidden:/root# mv /home/bar /home/bar-backup
address@hidden:/root# mv /home/bar-restore /home/bar
address@hidden:/root# exit

But I'd like to know:

a Is the complete process documented anywhere? All the duplicity docs
  I've seen discuss only the duplicity calls.

b Is there a better way to do a restore from a local disk? Again,
  pointers to docs are appreciated, but so is an explanation on this
  list.

c Is there a better way to do step 2? `sudo` was required to avoid
  errors. (I'll post about that separately.) In testing, I noted my
  files restored with appropriate metadata (e.g. rights, timestamp)
  except that symlinks are owned by root.

d Will step 3 work as intended? Notably, will the root shell exit to
  user=bar appropriately? Instead of exiting, should I restart? (e.g.
  `shutdown -r now`)

TIA, Tom Roche <address@hidden>