Restic is a backup solution for Linux and other systems. I'm using it for automated backups to an external drive, for now. Will also add an offsite solution soon. For now, I'm mostly relying on Dropbox and GitHub.

Install Restic

I downloaded the pre-build binary and installed to /usr/bin/.

Setup the repository

I used Basic guide on how to use restic for local backups and restic -h to set up the repository on my external drive.

This creates the repository for Restic to use for backups.

restic init --repo /media/dcandland/framework-backup/backups

Automate the backups

Following the post from Bithive Automatic Backups with Restic, and adopting it to my setup, I set up the following in /etc/backup.

Restic

backup_env

export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="/media/dcandland/framework-backup/backups"
export RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE="/etc/restic/pw.txt"

backup-excludes.txt

.cache/*
.local/share/[Tt]rash*
*.backup*
.dropbox*
*.log
node_modules
**/.git/*
**/_build/*
**/build/*
**/.svelte-kit/*
**/wire/*
**/.vscode/*
**/.terraform/*
**/tmp/*

Add your repository password to /etc/restic/pw.txt

This script runs the backups from systemd. Adjust as needed.

auto_backup.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# This script is intended to be run by a systemd timer

# Exit on failure or pipefail
set -e -o pipefail

# Set this to any location you like
BACKUP_PATHS="/home/dcandland/"

BACKUP_TAG=systemd.timer

# How many backups to keep.
RETENTION_DAYS=14
RETENTION_WEEKS=16
RETENTION_MONTHS=6
RETENTION_YEARS=1

source /etc/backup/backup_env

# Remove locks in case other stale processes kept them in
restic unlock &
wait $!

# Do the backup
restic backup \
       --verbose \
	     --exclude-file /etc/backup/backup-excludes.txt \
       --one-file-system \
       --tag $BACKUP_TAG \
       $BACKUP_PATHS &
wait $!

# Remove old Backups
restic forget \
       --verbose \
       --tag $BACKUP_TAG \
       --prune \
       --keep-daily $RETENTION_DAYS \
       --keep-weekly $RETENTION_WEEKS \
       --keep-monthly $RETENTION_MONTHS \
       --keep-yearly $RETENTION_YEARS &
wait $!

# Check if everything is fine
restic check &
wait $!

echo "Backup done!"

Systemd

I'm not very familiar with Systemd timers, but I resisted using 'cron' so I could learn more about them.

The timer:

/etc/systemd/system/backup.timer

[Unit]
Description=Backup on schedule

[Timer]
OnCalendar=daily
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

The service:

/etc/systemd/system/backup.service

[Unit]
Description=Backup with restic

[Service]
Type=simple
Nice=10
ExecStart=/etc/backup/auto_backup.sh
#$HOME must be set for restic to find /root/.cache/restic/
Environment="HOME=/root"

Add to Systemd

systemctl enable backup.timer --now

Usage

Manually run:

systemctl start backup

View the results:

journalctl -u backup.service

Mount the latest snapshot to view backup:

sudo mkdir /media/dcandland/snapshot
sudo restic mount -r /media/dcandland/framework-backup/backups /media/dcandland/snapshot