Restic Automated Backup System

A robust, production-ready backup solution using Restic with S3 storage.

⚠️ Important Disclaimer

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK - This software comes with NO WARRANTY. You are solely responsible for your data. See DISCLAIMER.md for important warnings and LICENSE for terms.

Features

S3-compatible storage (AWS S3, Backblaze B2, MinIO)
Intelligent retention policy (hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/yearly)
Encrypted backups with password protection
Optional Slack notifications for failures
Automatic repository initialization

Prerequisites

Linux system (Ubuntu/Debian/CentOS/RHEL)
Root or sudo access
S3-compatible storage (AWS S3, Backblaze B2, or similar)
Git (for cloning the repository)

Quick Start

1. Clone the Repository

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/NexGenCloud/restic_backup.git
cd restic_backup
chmod 755 restic_backup.sh

2. Install Restic

#RECOMMENDED:
#download latest binary
wget https://github.com/restic/restic/releases/download/v0.18.1/restic_0.18.1_linux_amd64.bz2
bunzip2 restic_0.18.1_linux_amd64.bz2
sudo mv restic_0.18.1_linux_amd64 /usr/local/bin/restic
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/restic

# OR install via package managers (possible outdated versions)
# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y restic
# CentOS/RHEL
sudo yum install -y restic

# Rocky
sudo dnf install -y restic


## Check version +0.16 RECOMMENDED
restic version 
## restic 0.18.1 compiled with go1.25.1 on linux/amd64

3. Configure Your Backup

# Copy the example configuration
sudo cp .env.example .env
sudo chmod 600 .env

# Edit with your settings
sudo nano .env

Essential Configuration

Edit .env with your values:

# S3 Repository
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="s3:s3.amazonaws.com/my-bucket/backups"
export RESTIC_PASSWORD="ChooseAStrongPasswordHere"

# AWS Credentials
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="YOUR_SECRET_KEY"

# What to backup
export BACKUP_DIRS="/home /etc /var/www"
export BACKUP_TAG="cron-hourly"

# Optional: Slack notifications
export SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL=""  # Leave empty to disable
export SLACK_CHANNEL="yourchannel" #optional

# Optional lock & logging 
export LOG_FILE="/var/log/restic-backup.log"
export LOCKFILE="/var/run/restic-backup-cron.lock"

# Optional BUT USEFUL IF RUNNING IN DOCKER, override hostname
export HOSTNAME=yourhostname

4. Test Your Configuration

source .env 
sudo -E touch $LOG_FILE
sudo -E chmod 644 $LOG_FILE

# Test the backup manually
sudo ./restic_backup.sh

# Check the log
cat $LOG_FILE

# List snapshots
sudo -E restic snapshots

# Check repository integrity
sudo -E restic check

5. Set Up Cron for Automatic Backups

# Edit root's crontab
sudo crontab -e

# NOTE: change /home/user/restic_backup/restic_backup.sh to the actual path of this repo
# Add one of these schedules or setup yours:
# Every hour at minute 0
0 * * * * /home/user/restic_backup/restic_backup.sh >/dev/null 2>&1
# Every day at 5:00 AM
0 5 * * * /home/user/restic_backup/restic_backup.sh >/dev/null 2>&1
# Every Monday at 4am
0 4 * * MON /home/user/restic_backup/restic_backup.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

# Verify cron entry
sudo crontab -l

Configuration Options

Retention Policy

Control how many snapshots to keep in .env:

export KEEP_HOURLY="24"   # Keep 24 hourly snapshots
export KEEP_DAILY="7"     # Keep 7 daily snapshots
export KEEP_WEEKLY="4"    # Keep 4 weekly snapshots
export KEEP_MONTHLY="6"   # Keep 6 monthly snapshots
export KEEP_YEARLY="2"    # Keep 2 yearly snapshots

Slack Notifications

To enable Slack alerts:

Create a Slack webhook: https://api.slack.com/messaging/webhooks
Add to configuration

Testing and Validation

1. Manual Backup Test

# Run backup manually and watch output
# NOTE: change /home/user/restic_backup/restic_backup.sh to the actual path of this repo
sudo /home/user/restic_backup/restic_backup.sh 2>&1 | tee test-backup.log

2. Verify Backups

# Source environment
source .env

# List all snapshots
restic snapshots

# Show detailed snapshot info
restic snapshots --json | jq .

# Check repository integrity
restic check

# Test restore (to temporary directory)
restic restore latest --target /tmp/test-restore --host yourhostname
ls -la /tmp/test-restore

4. Monitor Cron Execution

# Check if cron is running backups
grep CRON /var/log/syslog | grep restic

# Monitor backup log
tail -f /var/log/restic-backup.log

# Check last backup time
grep "Backup Job Completed Successfully" /var/log/restic-backup.log | tail -1

Restore Operations

Restore Latest Backup

# Source credentials
source .env

# Restore to original location (be careful!)
restic restore latest --target /

# Restore latest backup from a host to different location 
restic restore latest --target /tmp/restore --host yourhostname

Restore Specific File or Directory

# Find file in snapshots
restic find filename.txt

# Restore specific path from latest
restic restore latest --target /tmp/restore --include /path/to/file

# Restore from specific snapshot
restic restore abc12345 --target /tmp/restore

Browse Backup Contents

## NOTE requires fuse package 
# Mount repository as filesystem
mkdir /mnt/restic
restic mount /mnt/restic &

# Browse files
ls -la /mnt/restic
cd /mnt/restic/snapshots/latest

# Unmount when done
umount /mnt/restic

Clean Up Repository

# Remove old snapshots according to policy
source .env
restic forget --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --keep-monthly 6 --prune

# Clean up unreferenced data
restic prune

# Full repository check
restic check --read-data

Multiple Backup Jobs

The script defaults to .env, although it supports different env files as 1st parameter To backup different directories on different schedules:

# Create multiple configs
cp .env .env_db 
cp .env .env_web  
# Edit each config with different BACKUP_DIR and BACKUP_TAG
sudo nano .env_db
sudo nano .env_web
# NOTE: .env files and backup script must be on same directory

# Create wrapper scripts
cat << 'EOF' | sudo tee /home/user/restic_backup/backup_db.sh
#!/bin/bash
# Sample db dump and call for restic
mysqldump --all-databases > /backup/mysql-dump.sql
/home/user/restic_backup/restic_backup.sh .env_db
EOF

sudo chmod +x /home/user/restic_backup/backup*.sh

# Add to cron with different schedules
sudo crontab -e
# Add:
# 0 */2 * * * /home/user/restic_backup/backup_db.sh >/dev/null 2>&1
# 0 */6 * * * /home/user/restic_backup/backup_web.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

1. "Repository not found"

# Initialize repository
source .env
restic init

2. "Permission denied"

# Check file permissions
ls -la .env  # Should be 600
ls -la restic_backup.sh  # Should be 755

# Run with sudo
sudo /home/user/restic_backup/restic-backup.sh

3. "Another backup is running"

# Check for stuck process
ps aux | grep restic

# Remove stale lock file if needed and no backups are running
sudo rm /var/run/restic-backup-cron.lock

4. S3 Connection Issues

# Test S3 access
source .env
aws s3 ls s3://your-bucket/

# Check credentials
echo $AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
echo $AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Debug Mode

For detailed debugging:

# Run with bash debug mode
bash -x ./restic_backup.sh 2>&1 | tee debug.log

License

MIT License - See LICENSE file for details

Support

Restic Documentation: https://restic.readthedocs.io/
Report Issues: https://github.com/NexGenCloud/restic_backup/issues
Restic Forum: https://forum.restic.net/

Contributing

Pull requests welcome! Please test your changes thoroughly and update documentation.

Changelog

v1.0.0 (2024)

Initial release
S3 backend support
Slack notifications
Automatic retention management
Cron integration

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 3 Commits
.env.example		.env.example
.gitignore		.gitignore
DISCLAIMER.md		DISCLAIMER.md
LICENSE.md		LICENSE.md
README.md		README.md
restic_backup.sh		restic_backup.sh

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