Restic Backup Wrapper

This wrapper attempts to make running restic a bit easier. It reads configuration files (in the form of .env files) and provides shortcuts to be used in manual and automated (cronjob's) situations alike. I tried to keep the script as simple as possible so you can hack on it to suit your needs. Notifications about the result of a backup job are handled by calling a script called restic_notify. The one provided in this repository sends mail over SMTP.

This script should work without problems on most linux distributions. I can not vouch for OSX but feedback is welcome.

Setup

After checking out this repo (or just downloading the script) create config files in the configs/ directory. There is already an example in this directory. The file name of the .env file dictates the 'job name'. You will need this later. Please be aware that you currently need to create an excludefile even if you are not using any excludes. This file can be empty.

(See Restic Docs for examples)

When you have created the config files it might be wise to back them up for safekeeping using ./restic_wrapper -a export-config.

If you have not initialized a Restic repository at the location you set in RESTIC_REPOSITORY be sure to create one using ./restic_wrapper -b example-job -a run -r init.

You are now ready to use the wrapper. See ./restic_wrapper (without parameters) for all options.

Notifications

By default restic-wrapper outputs all status information to the terminal. You can route that output to the restic_notify script by providing the -m flag like so: ./restic_wrapper -b example-job -a backup -m.

The restic_notify script in this repository sends email over SMTP and sets the subject according to whether or not the backup job succeeded. Mail is sent using s-nail so be sure to install that on your system.

See configs/smtp.env.example and rename it to configs/smtp.env.

Scheduled execution

You can set up a cronjob for (for example) nightly backups at 3:30.

 30 3 * * *       ~/restic_wrapper/restic_wrapper -b example-job -a backup-full -m

If your system has an MTA installed you will also get email if restic_wrapper itself fails for some reason but because most users do not have a properly configured MTA I chose to integrate basic notification functionality in restic_wrapper. Another advantage of letting restic_wrapper handle the notifications is that it can send different mails for failed and succeeded jobs without needing a lot of bash magic (which not everyone might be comfortable with).

Changelog

• v0.3.0:
  • Keep configs in separate dir
  • provide example configs (also for rclone)
  • make restic_notify compatible with newer versions of s-nail
• v0.2.1: Miscellaneous documentation updates.
• v0.2.0: Externalize notification functionality to make the script a lot simpler (and refactored a bunch).
• v0.1.0: Added export-config option to create a tarball of all your config files.