Duplicity backup via sftp finishes without errors but no files transferred to remote host, why?

Question

I want to use the following command to do a remote backup of /home:

duplicity full /home sftp://[email protected]/home/user/backup

When the command is run I get the following output:

Local and Remote metadata are synchronized, no sync needed.
Last full backup date: none
GnuPG passphrase: 
Retype passphrase to confirm: 
--------------[ Backup Statistics ]--------------
StartTime 1465578990.15 (Fri Jun 10 19:16:30 2016)
EndTime 1465578990.22 (Fri Jun 10 19:16:30 2016)
ElapsedTime 0.07 (0.07 seconds)
SourceFiles 75
SourceFileSize 118644 (116 KB)
NewFiles 75
NewFileSize 118644 (116 KB)
DeletedFiles 0
ChangedFiles 0
ChangedFileSize 0 (0 bytes)
ChangedDeltaSize 0 (0 bytes)
DeltaEntries 75
RawDeltaSize 110452 (108 KB)
TotalDestinationSizeChange 35295 (34.5 KB)
Errors 0
-------------------------------------------------

But no files are stored on the remote host. If I change the destination sftp://[email protected]/home/user/backups in the command above to for example file:///home/user/backup the backup files are stored locally as expected, and I get the same terminal output as above.

What puzzles me more is that if I change the destination to some url that is definitely not writable on the remote host, I still get the message above saying Errors 0, but of course no files are transferred to the remote host.

What am I doing wrong? Why can I do a local backup but not a remote one, and why are there no error message when the files are not transferred to the remote host?

---

Additional info:

Tried to run the command with the --verbosity 9 switch and a directory that doesn't exist on the remote host set as the destination dir:

[...]
AsyncScheduler: running task synchronously (asynchronicity disabled)
ssh: [chan 1] open('/var/httpd.www/home/notExistingDir/duplicity-full.20160610T173142Z.vol1.difftar.gpg', 'wb')
ssh: [chan 1] open('/var/httpd.www/home/notExistingDir/duplicity-full.20160610T173142Z.vol1.difftar.gpg', 'wb') -> 00000000
ssh: [chan 1] close(00000000)
ssh: [chan 1] stat('/var/httpd.www/home/notExistingDir/duplicity-full.20160610T173142Z.vol1.difftar.gpg')
Deleting /tmp/duplicity-gYlv_8-tempdir/mktemp-MOjDuP-2
Forgetting temporary file /tmp/duplicity-gYlv_8-tempdir/mktemp-MOjDuP-2
AsyncScheduler: task completed successfully
Processed volume 1
[...]

Answer 1

looks like you backed up to ~user/home/user/backup on the target machine.

try (notice the extra slash signalling an absolute path)

duplicity full /home sftp://[email protected]//home/user/backup

or alternatively

duplicity full /home sftp://[email protected]/backup

.

..ede/duply.net

Answer 2

You need to include a : to separate the hostname from the path on the host

duplicity full /home sftp://[email protected]:/home/user/backup