Restic Backup Docker Container

A docker container to automate restic backups

This container runs restic backups in regular intervals.

• Easy setup and maintanance
• Support for different targets (tested with: Local, NFS, SFTP, AWS)
• Support restic mount inside the container to browse the backup files

Container: lobaro/restic-backup-docker

Stable

docker pull lobaro/restic-backup-docker:1.2-0.9.4

Latest (experimental)

docker pull lobaro/restic-backup-docker:latest

Hooks

If you need to execute a script before or after each backup, you need to add your hook script in the container folder /hooks:

-v ~/home/user/hooks:/hooks

Call your pre backup script pre-backup.sh and post backup script post-backup.sh

Please don't hesitate to report any issue you find. Thanks.

Test the container

Clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/Lobaro/restic-backup-docker.git
cd restic-backup-docker

Build the container. The container is named backup-test

./build.sh

Run the container.

./run.sh

This will run the container backup-test with the name backup-test. Existing containers with that names are completly removed automatically.

The container will backup ~/test-data to a repository with password test at ~/test-repo every minute. The repository is initialized automatically by the container.

To enter your container execute

docker exec -ti backup-test /bin/sh

Now you can use restic as documented, e.g. try to run restic snapshots to list all your snapshots.

Logfiles

Logfiles are inside the container. If needed you can create volumes for them.

docker logs

Shows /var/log/cron.log

Additionally you can see the the full log, including restic output, of the last execution in /var/log/backup-last.log. When the backup fails the log is copied to /var/log/restic-error-last.log. If configured, you can find the full output of the mail notification in /var/log/mail-last.log.

Use the running container

Assuming the container name is restic-backup-var

You can execute restic with docker exec -ti restic-backup-var restic

Backup

To execute a backup manually independent of the CRON run:

docker exec -ti restic-backup-var /bin/backup

Backup a single file or directory

docker exec -ti restic-backup-var restic backup /data/path/to/dir --tag my-tag

Restore

You might want to mount a separate hostvolume at e.g. /restore to not override existing data while restoring.

Get your snapshot ID with

docker exec -ti restic-backup-var restic snapshots

e.g. abcdef12

 docker exec -ti restic-backup-var restic restore --include /data/path/to/files --target / abcdef12

The target is / since all data backed up should be inside the host mounted /data dir. If you mount /restore you should set --target /restore and data will end up in /restore/data/path/to/files.

Customize the Container

The container is setup by setting environment variables and volumes.

Environment variables

• RESTIC_REPOSITORY - the location of the restic repository. Default /mnt/restic. For S3: s3:https://s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET_NAME
• RESTIC_PASSWORD - the password for the restic repository. Will also be used for restic init during first start when the repository is not initialized.
• RESTIC_TAG - Optional. To tag the images created by the container.
• NFS_TARGET - Optional. If set the given NFS is mounted, i.e. mount -o nolock -v ${NFS_TARGET} /mnt/restic. RESTIC_REPOSITORY must remain it's default value!
• BACKUP_CRON - A cron expression to run the backup. Note: cron daemon uses UTC time zone. Default: 0 */6 * * * aka every 6 hours.
• RESTIC_FORGET_ARGS - Optional. Only if specified restic forget is run with the given arguments after each backup. Example value: -e "RESTIC_FORGET_ARGS=--prune --keep-last 10 --keep-hourly 24 --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 52 --keep-monthly 120 --keep-yearly 100"
• RESTIC_JOB_ARGS - Optional. Allows to specify extra arguments to the back up job such as limiting bandwith with --limit-upload or excluding file masks with --exclude.
• AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID - Optional. When using restic with AWS S3 storage.
• AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY - Optional. When using restic with AWS S3 storage.
• TEAMS_WEBHOOK_URL - Optional. If specified, the content of /var/log/backup-last.log is sent to your Microsoft Teams channel after each backup.
• MAILX_ARGS - Optional. If specified, the content of /var/log/backup-last.log is sent via mail after each backup using an external SMTP. To have maximum flexibility, you have to specify the mail/smtp parameters by your own. Have a look at the mailx manpage for further information. Example value: -e "MAILX_ARGS=-r '[email protected]' -s 'Result of the last restic backup run' -S smtp='smtp.example.com:587' -S smtp-use-starttls -S smtp-auth=login -S smtp-auth-user='username' -S smtp-auth-password='password' '[email protected]'".
• OS_AUTH_URL - Optional. When using restic with OpenStack Swift container.
• OS_PROJECT_ID - Optional. When using restic with OpenStack Swift container.
• OS_PROJECT_NAME - Optional. When using restic with OpenStack Swift container.
• OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME - Optional. When using restic with OpenStack Swift container.
• OS_PROJECT_DOMAIN_ID - Optional. When using restic with OpenStack Swift container.
• OS_USERNAME - Optional. When using restic with OpenStack Swift container.
• OS_PASSWORD - Optional. When using restic with OpenStack Swift container.
• OS_REGION_NAME - Optional. When using restic with OpenStack Swift container.
• OS_INTERFACE - Optional. When using restic with OpenStack Swift container.
• OS_IDENTITY_API_VERSION - Optional. When using restic with OpenStack Swift container.

Volumes

• /data - This is the data that gets backed up. Just mount it to wherever you want.

Set the hostname

Since restic saves the hostname with each snapshot and the hostname of a docker container is derived from it's id you might want to customize this by setting the hostname of the container to another value.

Set --hostname in the network settings

Backup via SFTP

Since restic needs a password less login to the SFTP server make sure you can do sftp [email protected] from inside the container. If you can do so from your host system, the easiest way is to just mount your .ssh folder conaining the authorized cert into the container by specifying -v ~/.ssh:/root/.ssh as argument for docker run.

Now you can simply specify the restic repository to be an SFTP repository.

-e "RESTIC_REPOSITORY=sftp:[email protected]:/tmp/backup"

Backup via OpenStack Swift

Restic can backup data to an OpenStack Swift container. Because Swift supports various authentication methods, credentials are passed through environment variables. In order to help integration with existing OpenStack installations, the naming convention of those variables follows the official Python Swift client.
Now you can simply specify the restic repository to be an Swift repository.

-e "RESTIC_REPOSITORY=swift:backup:/"
-e "RESTIC_PASSWORD=password"
-e "OS_AUTH_URL=https://auth.cloud.ovh.net/v3"
-e "OS_PROJECT_ID=xxxx"
-e "OS_PROJECT_NAME=xxxx"
-e "OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME=Default"
-e "OS_PROJECT_DOMAIN_ID=default"
-e "OS_USERNAME=username"
-e "OS_PASSWORD=password"
-e "OS_REGION_NAME=SBG"
-e "OS_INTERFACE=public"
-e "OS_IDENTITY_API_VERSION=3"

Backup via rclone

To use rclone as a backend for restic, simply add the rclone config file as a volume with -v /absolute/path/to/rclone.conf:/root/.config/rclone/rclone.conf.

Note that for some backends (Among them Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive), rclone writes data back to the rclone.conf file. In this case it needs to be writable by Docker.

If the the container fails to write the new rclone.conf file with the error message Failed to save config after 10 tries: Failed to move previous config to backup location, add the entire rclone directory as volume: -v /absolute/path/to/rclone-dir:/root/.config/rclone.

Versioning & Changelog

Starting from v1.3.0 versioning follows Semantic versioning

Build metadata is used to declare the Restic version.

Example: 1.3.0+0.9.5 (includes Restic 0.9.5)

For changelog see: https://github.com/lobaro/restic-backup-docker/releases