How can I get started quickly?

There's a lot of information below about how to install, configure, and run dupReport. But you probably don't want to read all that, you want to just start running the program! Here's the quick & dirty guide to get you started.

1. Make sure Python 3.x is available and running on your system. For information on downloading and installing Python see the Python Software Foundation web site.
2. Make sure your Duplicati backup jobs are named properly. The best naming scheme (at least to get you started) is:

<source>-<destination>

where <source> is the name of the computer where the files are located and <destination> is the place where they are going to. For example, if your computer is named "shenjhou" and you are backing up to a directory on the "discovery" computer, the backup name would be:

shenjhou-discovery

For more interesting information on naming backup jobs see the section below on "Source-Destination Pairs."

3. Configure a Duplicati job to send its output report to an email account. See the Duplicati documentation for the "send-mail" advanced email options to learn how to do this.
4. Run at least one backup with the newly-named backup job so that you have an email that dupReport can find on your email server.
5. Download the dupReport code from the GitHub page by clicking the "Clone or download" button on the dupReport GitHub page, then click "Download ZIP." This will put the ZIP file on your system. Unzip the file to the directory of your choice.
6. Run dupReport.py to install the default configuration files. The instructions for doing this can be found below in "First-time Installation." Read that section, do what it says, then come back here.
7. After the initial run, locate the "dupreport.rc" file in the dupReport directory. Open the file with a text editor (notepad, notepad++, nano, vi, whatever. Again, no judgements.) Update the following sections as noted:

[incoming]
intransport = imap    				# Select imap or POP3
inserver = localhost				# DNS name of email server with Duplicati emails
inport = 993						# IP port for transport. 993 for IMAP, 995 for POP3
inencryption = tls					# "tls" or "none"
inaccount = [email protected]	# Account ID on email server
inpassword = ********				# Password for email server
infolder = INBOX					# Folder to find emails (IMAP only)

[outgoing]
outserver = localhost				# DNS name of outgoing SMTP server
outencryption = tls					# "tls" or "none"
outaccount = [email protected]	# Account ID on SMTP server
outpassword = ********				# Password for SMTP server
outsender = [email protected]		# ID to send emails from
outreceiver = [email protected] # Email address to send report to

There are lots of other options you can configure in the .rc file to customize how dupReport runs, but these are the bare minimum you need to get started.

8. Run the dupReport.py program using the appropriate command line as shown in the "Running the Program After Installation" section below.
9. Let the program run to completion. When it is complete you should get an email with the output report.

That's the quick way to do it! Now that you've seen how it works, please read the rest of this guide for LOTS more information on how to configure dupReport to get the most out of the program.