restic-automatic-backup-scheduler | Automatic restic backup using Backblaze B2 storage | Continuous Backup library

Depending on your system, the setup will look different. Choose one of:.
Linux + Systemd
macOS + LaunchAgent
Windows + ScheduledTask
Cron - for any system having a cron daemon. Tested on FreeBSD and macOS.
☝ Note The Linux setup here will assume an installation to /. Many Linux distributions nowadays use Systemd, which features good support for running services and scheduled jobs. If your distribution is no on Systemd, check out the cron setup instead.
Create B2 bucket + credentials
Install scripts, configs systemd units/timers: With make: $ sudo make install-systemd Arch Linux users: use the AUR package, e.g. $ yay -S restic-automatic-backup-scheduler
Fill out configuration values in /etc/restic.
Initialize the remote repo. Source the profile to make all needed configuration available to restic(1). All commands after this assumes the profile is sourced in the current shell. # source /etc/restic/default.env.sh # restic init
Configure how often backups should be done. If needed, edit OnCalendar in /usr/lib/systemd/system/restic-backup@.timer.
Enable automated backup for starting with the system & make the first backup: # systemctl enable --now restic-backup@default.timer
Watch the first backup progress with Systemd journal: # journalctl -f --lines=50 -u restic-backup@default
Verify the backup # restic snapshots
(recommended) Enable the check job that verifies that the backups for the profile are all intact. # systemctl enable --now restic-check@default.timer
(optional) Define multiple profiles: just make a copy of the default.env.sh and use the defined profile name in place of default to run backups or enable timers. Notice that the value after @ works as a parameter. # systemctl enable restic-backup@other_profile.timer
Consider more optional features.
☝ Note The macOS setup here will assume an installation to /usr/local, as custom with Homebrew installations. Launchd is the modern built-in service scheduler in macOS. It has support for running services as root (Daemon) or as a normal user (Agent). Here we set up an LauchAgent to be run as your normal user for starting regular backups.
Create B2 bucket + credentials
Install scripts, configs and LaunchAgent: (recommended) with Homebrew from the erikw/homebrew-tap: $ brew install erikw/tap/restic-automatic-backup-scheduler Using make: $ make PREFIX=/usr/local install-launchagent
Fill out configuration values in /usr/local/etc/restic.
Initialize the remote repo. Source the profile to make all needed configuration available to restic(1). All commands after this assumes the profile is sourced in the current shell. $ source /usr/local/etc/restic/default.env.sh $ restic init
Configure how often backups should be done. If needed, edit OnCalendar in Homebrew install: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.restic-automatic-backup-scheduler.plist. make install: ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.github.erikw.restic-backup.plist.
Enable automated backup for starting with the system & make the first backup: Homebrew install: $ brew services start restic-automatic-backup-scheduler make install: $ launchctl bootstrap gui/$UID ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.github.erikw.restic-backup.plist $ launchctl enable gui/$UID/com.github.erikw.restic-backup $ launchctl kickstart -p gui/$UID/com.github.erikw.restic-backup As a convenience, a shortcut for the above commands are $ make activate-launchagent-backup.
Watch the first backup progress from the log files: $ tail -f ~/Library/Logs/restic/backup*
Verify the backup $ restic snapshots
(recommended) Enable the check job that verifies that the backups for the profile are all intact. Homebrew install: $ brew services start restic-automatic-backup-scheduler-check make install: $ launchctl bootstrap gui/$UID ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.github.erikw.restic-check.plist $ launchctl enable gui/$UID/com.github.erikw.restic-check $ launchctl kickstart -p gui/$UID/com.github.erikw.restic-check As a convenience, a shortcut for the above commands are $ make activate-launchagent-check.
Consider more optional features.
Then control the service with homebrew:.
Use the disable command to temporarily pause the agent, or bootout to uninstall it. If you updated the .plist file, you need to issue the bootout followed by bootrstrap and enable sub-commands of launchctl. This will guarantee that the file is properly reloaded.
Windows comes with a built-in task scheduler called ScheduledTask. The frontend app is "Task Scheduler" (taskschd.msc) and we can use PowerShell commands to install a new scheduled task. I describe here one of may ways you can get restic and this backup script working on Windows. Here I chose to work with scoop and git-bash.
Install scoop
Install dependencies from a PowerShell with administrator privileges: powershell> scoop install restic make git
In a non-privileged PowerShell, start git-bash and clone this repo powershell> git-bash git-bash$ mkdir ~/src && cd ~/src/ git-bash$ git clone https://github.com/erikw/restic-automatic-backup-scheduler.git && cd $(basename "$_" .git)
Install scripts, configs and ScheduledTasks git-bash$ make install-schedtask
Fill out configuration values in /etc/restic. git-bash$ vim /etc/restic/* Note that you should use cygwin/git-bash paths. E.g. in default.env.sh you could have export RESTIC_BACKUP_PATHS='/c/Users/<username>/My Documents'
Initialize the remote repo. Source the profile to make all needed configuration available to restic(1). All commands after this assumes the profile is sourced in the current shell. git-bash$ source /etc/restic/default.env.sh git-bash$ restic init
Make the first backup git-bash$ restic_backup.sh
Verify the backup git-bash$ restic snapshots
Inspect the installed ScheduledTasks and make a test run Open the app "Task Scheduler" (taskschd.msc) Go to the local "Task Scheduler Library" Right click on one of the newly installed tasks e.g. restic_backup and click "run". If the tasks are not there, maybe you opended it up before make install-schedtask: just close and start it again to refresh. Now a git-bash window should open running restic_backup.sh, and the next time the configured schedule hits!
Consider more optional features.
☝ Note There are many different cron implementations out there and they all work slightly different. Any system that has a cron-like system can easily setup restic backups as well. However if you system supports any of the previous setups, those are recommended over cron as they provide more features and reliability for your backups.
Create B2 bucket + credentials
Install scripts, configs systemd units/timers: $ sudo make install-cron This assumes that your cron supports dropping files into /etc/cron.d/. If that is not the case, simply copy the relevant contents of the installed /etc/cron.d/restic in to your /etc/crontab. # grep "^@.*restic_" /etc/cron.d/restic >> /etc/crontab
Fill out configuration values in /etc/restic.
Initialize the remote repo. Source the profile to make all needed configuration available to restic(1). All commands after this assumes the profile is sourced in the current shell. # source /etc/restic/default.env.sh # restic init
Make the first backup # restic_backup.sh
Verify the backup # restic snapshots
Configure how often backups should be done by directly editing /etc/cron.d/restic (or /etc/crontab).
Consider more optional features.
This is a more detailed explanation than the TL;DR sections above that will give you more understanding in the setup. This section is more general, but uses Linux + Systemd as the example setup.
Create a Backblaze account (use 2FA!).
Create a new B2 bucket. Private, without B2 encryption and without the object lock feature
Create a pair of keyId and applicationKey Limit scope of the new id and key pair to only the above created bucket.
_global.env.sh: Fill this file out with your global settings including B2 keyID & applicationKey.
default.env.sh: This is the default profile. Fill this out with bucket name, backup paths and retention policy. This file sources _global.env.sh and is thus self-contained and can be sourced in the shell when you want to issue some manual restic commands. For example: $ source /etc/restic/default.env.sh $ restic snapshots # You don't have to supply all parameters like --repo, as they are now in your environment!
pw.txt: This file should contain the restic password (single line) used to encrypt the repository. This is a new password what soon will be used when initializing the new repository. It should be unique to this restic backup repository and is needed for restoring from it. Don't re-use your B2 login password, this should be different. For example you can generate a 128 character password (must all be on one line) with: $ openssl rand -base64 128 | tr -d '\n' > /etc/restic/pw.txt
backup_exclude.txt: List of file patterns to ignore. This will trim down your backup size and the speed of the backup a lot when done properly!
restic_backup.sh: A script that defines how to run the backup. The intention is that you should not need to edit this script yourself, but be able to control everything from the *.env.sh profiles.
/etc/restic/backup_exclude.txt - global exclude list. You can use only this one if your setup is easy. This is set in _global.env.sh. If you need a different file for another profile, you can override the envvar RESTIC_BACKUP_EXCLUDE_FILE in this profile.
.backup_exclude.txt per backup path. If you have e.g. an USB disk mounted at /mnt/media and this path is included in the $RESTIC_BACKUP_PATHS, you can place a file /mnt/media/.backup_exclude.txt and it will automatically picked up. The nice thing about this is that the backup paths are self-contained in terms of what they shoud exclude!
restic-backup@.service: A service that calls the backup script with the specified profile. The profile is specified by the value after @ when running it (see below).
restic-backup@.timer: A timer that starts the former backup every day (same thing about profile here). If needed, edit this file to configure how often back up should be made. See the OnCalendar key in the file.