Runrestic

runrestic is a simple Python wrapper script for the Restic backup software that initiates a backup, prunes any old backups according to a retention policy, and validates backups for consistency. The script supports specifying your settings in a declarative configuration file rather than having to put them all on the command-line, and handles common errors.

Example config

repositories = [
    "/tmp/restic-repo",
    "sftp:user@host:/srv/restic-repo",
    "s3:s3.amazonaws.com/bucket_name"
    ]

[environment]
RESTIC_PASSWORD = "CHANGEME"

[backup]
sources = [
    "/home",
    "/var"
    ]

[prune]
keep-last =  3
keep-hourly =  5

Alternatively you can also just use JSON. For a more comprehensive example see the example.toml or check the schema.json

Getting started

Installing runrestic and restic

To install runrestic, run the following command to download and install it:

sudo pip3 install --upgrade runrestic

You can either manually download and install Restic or you can just run runrestic and it'll try to download it for you.

Initializing and running

Once you have restic and runrestic ready, you should put a config file in on of the scanned locations, namely:

• /etc/runrestic.toml
• /etc/runrestic/example.toml
• ~/.config/runrestic/example.toml
• /etc/runrestic.json
• /etc/runrestic/example.json
• ~/.config/runrestic/example.json

Afterwards, run

runrestic init # to initialize all the repos in `repositories`

runrestic  # without actions will do: runrestic backup prune check
# or
runrestic [action]

If, however, you need to pass along arbitrary other flags you can now add them to the end of your runrestic call like so:

runrestic backup -- --one-file-system

Restic shell

To use the options defined in runrestic with restic (e.g. for a backup restore), you can use the shell action:

runrestic shell

If you are using multiple repositories or configurations, you can select one now.

Prometheus / Grafana metrics

@d-matt created a nice dashboard for Grafana here: https://grafana.com/grafana/dashboards/11064/revisions

systemd timer or cron

If you want to run runrestic automatically, say once a day, the you can configure a job runner to invoke it periodically.

systemd

If you're using systemd instead of cron to run jobs, download the sample systemd service file and the sample systemd timer file. Then, from the directory where you downloaded them:

sudo mv runrestic.service runrestic.timer /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl enable runrestic.timer
sudo systemctl start runrestic.timer

cron

If you're using cron, download the sample cron file. Then, from the directory where you downloaded it:

sudo mv runrestic /etc/cron.d/runrestic
sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.d/runrestic

Changelog

• v0.5.24

  • Exit the script with returncode = 1 if there was an error in any of the tasks

• v0.5.23

  • support JSON config files.

• v0.5.21

  • fix issue where "check" does not count towards overall "errors"-metric

• v0.5! Expect breaking changes.

  • metrics output is a bit different
  • see new parallel and retry_* options.

Ansible

@tabic wrote an ansible role, you can find it here: https://github.com/outwire/ansible-role-restic . (I have neither checked nor tested it.)

Development

This project is managed with poetry

Install it if not already present:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/python-poetry/poetry/master/get-poetry.py | python
# or
pip install --user poetry

Installing dependencies

poetry install

Running Tests

poetry run pytest

Thanks

This project was initially based on borgmatic but has since evolved into something else.