I have setup my backup folder and put the Automatic backups switch to on. In the Overview tab I cant press the "Back Up Now" because it is grayed out.
I am using Ubuntu 11.10 and here is the content of ~/.gconf/apps/deja-dup/%gconf.xml :
$ cat ~/.gconf/apps/deja-dup/%gconf.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gconf>
<entry name="delete-after" mtime="1328975617" type="int" value="7"/>
<entry name="periodic-period" mtime="1328975577" type="int" value="1"/>
<entry name="exclude-list" mtime="1328975572" type="list" ltype="string">
<li type="string">
<stringvalue>/home/r2d2/.local/share/Trash</stringvalue>
</li>
</entry>
<entry name="periodic" mtime="1328988637" type="bool" value="true"/>
<entry name="backend" mtime="1328975520" type="string">
<stringvalue>file</stringvalue>
</entry>
</gconf>
Shorter version
Ctrl+Alt+t to open a terminal
Re-run the "Backups" program and try again.
In my case, there was no backup running but deja-dup had a couple of things running.
I did a
ps -eaf | grep dup
and killed the pids. Then I started DejaDup from the menu and the button was active.That button is grayed out when a backup (or restore) is already in progress. Maybe one was running in the background?
Is the button enabled now?
Immediately the backup button becomes active.
This should be reported as a bug as the frontend should either have a button to terminate running backups or automatically reconcile concurrent backups.
My 'back up now' button was disabled. In my case the problem was that when I opened the Deja Dup config, the 'storage' option was set to 'Ubuntu One', and it opened another window for logging into that.
I changed the storage setting to a local drive, but it took me a while to realise I had to cancel the Ubuntu One login before Deja Dup would allow me to run a backup.
I ended the process found in the system monitor and the buttons immediately 'ungreyed'. They way I got into the problem was canceling a backup to postpone figuring out a password for it. I had shut down the machine several times since then but it was still stuck there I guess.
It might also be that you don't have to kill the process, because it is already doing what you want it to do in the background. I just opened the destination folder and I'm seeing that lots of backup files are being created.