just remembered. most likely a gpg upgrade issue, see <
quoting from linked workaround in the above ticket
" The problem is, like the linked post stated, that gpg 2.1 retires passphrase from pipe for key auth. The gpg agents needs to be enabled and configured for the restore to work.
Add the following to ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf:
use-agent
pinentry-mode loopback
And to your ~/.gnupg/gpg-agent.conf:
allow-loopback-pinentry
"
..ede/duply.net