Restic

Restic is a fast and secure backup program that supports deduplication, encryption, and a variety of backends (like local storage, SFTP, and cloud providers). It uses rclone for cloud sync/copy jobs.

Tips

• Regularly verify your backups using restic check.
• Restic supports hooks (like --before and --after) that can be used to execute commands before or after the backup, which can be useful for database dumps or stopping/starting services.

Examples

Basic Backup

Backup a directory to a local repository

#!/bin/bash
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/path/to/repo
export RESTIC_PASSWORD=YourPassword

restic backup /path/to/data

Backup with Exclusions

Backup a directory but exclude certain patterns:

#!/bin/bash
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/path/to/repo
export RESTIC_PASSWORD=YourPassword

restic backup /path/to/data --exclude '*.log' --exclude '/path/to/data/temp/'

Backup to S3

Backup a directory to an S3 bucket:

#!/bin/bash
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=s3:s3.amazonaws.com/bucket_name
export RESTIC_PASSWORD=YourPassword
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=YourAccessKey
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=YourSecretKey

restic backup /path/to/data

Automated Cleanup

Remove old backups based on certain criteria:

#!/bin/bash
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/path/to/repo
export RESTIC_PASSWORD=YourPassword

# Keep the last 7 daily backups, 4 weekly backups, and 6 monthly backups
restic forget --prune --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --keep-monthly 6

Mount a Repository

Mount your Restic repository to a local directory for browsing:

#!/bin/bash
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/path/to/repo
export RESTIC_PASSWORD=YourPassword

mkdir /mnt/restic
restic mount /mnt/restic

Backup with Tags

Backup data with specific tags for easier management:

#!/bin/bash
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/path/to/repo
export RESTIC_PASSWORD=YourPassword

restic backup /path/to/data --tag monthly --tag critical

List Snapshots with Tags

List only the snapshots with a specific tag:

#!/bin/bash
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/path/to/repo
export RESTIC_PASSWORD=YourPassword

restic snapshots --tag monthly

Backup and Send Notification

Backup data and send a notification email if the backup fails:

#!/bin/bash
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/path/to/repo
export RESTIC_PASSWORD=YourPassword

if ! restic backup /path/to/data; then
    echo "Backup failed!" | mail -s "Restic Backup Failure" your@email.com
fi