The path should have been /home/user/.config/tool/config.json in which case this would have worked as expected. It did not work because the given path is a directory. So this issue is on the user’s side.
I am writing this post, because I could not understand the error message:
Fatal: cannot dump file: stdout is the terminal, please redirect output
What does it want to tell me? Could it check if the path is a directory and say something like
Fatal: cannot dump this path because it is a directory?
Otherwise, since restic does not now about file types, dumped file could be binary and there is a risk of garbage data on the screen, like:
$ cat /usr/bin/env
NN))HAHASHAS�`�`�`�@pp@p@@@@DDS�dpp@p@@P�d���--Q�dR�dHAHASHAS/nix/store/dbcw19dshdwnxdv5q2g6wldj6syyvq7l-glibc-2.39-52/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.20GNUNU�
... and a lot more
I hope it makes sense.
(if you are dumping a folder instead of a file, document says it is dumping as tar or zip file, so you can either do > restored.tar or pass the -a zip parameter to be able to redirect to > restore.zip)
I see. For the text file it worked. That’s why I thought the issue is about the directory. I expected some binary data, some restic representation of a directory, a directory listing or an error about directories but not this message.
But dump can actually dump directories as tar files as you pointed out. I could now make it show the output by piping to less (restic ... | less) and file recognizes it as POSIX tar archive.
Interesting idea. Since restic can detect if output is terminal then it can explain a bit more, or redirect to --help text.
There should be a “solution” tickbox under messages (for you as the thread owner?).
But maybe that’s something which needs some user privileges, not sure. In any case, case closed
I hope it makes sense.