Preparing a new repository

The place where your backups will be saved is called a “repository”. This chapter explains how to create (“init”) such a repository. The repository can be stored locally, or on some remote server or service. We’ll first cover using a local repository; the remaining sections of this chapter cover all the other options. You can skip to the next chapter once you’ve read the relevant section here.

For automated backups, restic accepts the repository location in the environment variable RESTIC_REPOSITORY. For the password, several options exist:

  • Setting the environment variable RESTIC_PASSWORD
  • Specifying the path to a file with the password via the option --password-file or the environment variable RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE
  • Configuring a program to be called when the password is needed via the option --password-command or the environment variable RESTIC_PASSWORD_COMMAND

Local

In order to create a repository at /srv/restic-repo, run the following command and enter the same password twice:

$ restic init --repo /srv/restic-repo
enter password for new backend:
enter password again:
created restic backend 085b3c76b9 at /srv/restic-repo
Please note that knowledge of your password is required to access the repository.
Losing your password means that your data is irrecoverably lost.

Warning

Remembering your password is important! If you lose it, you won’t be able to access data stored in the repository.

SFTP

In order to backup data via SFTP, you must first set up a server with SSH and let it know your public key. Passwordless login is really important since restic fails to connect to the repository if the server prompts for credentials.

Once the server is configured, the setup of the SFTP repository can simply be achieved by changing the URL scheme in the init command:

$ restic -r sftp:user@host:/srv/restic-repo init
enter password for new backend:
enter password again:
created restic backend f1c6108821 at sftp:user@host:/srv/restic-repo
Please note that knowledge of your password is required to access the repository.
Losing your password means that your data is irrecoverably lost.

You can also specify a relative (read: no slash (/) character at the beginning) directory, in this case the dir is relative to the remote user’s home directory.

Note

Please be aware that sftp servers do not expand the tilde character (~) normally used as an alias for a user’s home directory. If you want to specify a path relative to the user’s home directory, pass a relative path to the sftp backend.

The backend config string does not allow specifying a port. If you need to contact an sftp server on a different port, you can create an entry in the ssh file, usually located in your user’s home directory at ~/.ssh/config or in /etc/ssh/ssh_config:

Host foo
    User bar
    Port 2222

Then use the specified host name foo normally (you don’t need to specify the user name in this case):

$ restic -r sftp:foo:/srv/restic-repo init

You can also add an entry with a special host name which does not exist, just for use with restic, and use the Hostname option to set the real host name:

Host restic-backup-host
    Hostname foo
    User bar
    Port 2222

Then use it in the backend specification:

$ restic -r sftp:restic-backup-host:/srv/restic-repo init

Last, if you’d like to use an entirely different program to create the SFTP connection, you can specify the command to be run with the option -o sftp.command="foobar".

Note

Please be aware that sftp servers close connections when no data is received by the client. This can happen when restic is processing huge amounts of unchanged data. To avoid this issue add the following lines to the client’s .ssh/config file:

ServerAliveInterval 60
ServerAliveCountMax 240

REST Server

In order to backup data to the remote server via HTTP or HTTPS protocol, you must first set up a remote REST server instance. Once the server is configured, accessing it is achieved by changing the URL scheme like this:

$ restic -r rest:http://host:8000/

Depending on your REST server setup, you can use HTTPS protocol, password protection, multiple repositories or any combination of those features. The TCP/IP port is also configurable. Here are some more examples:

$ restic -r rest:https://host:8000/
$ restic -r rest:https://user:pass@host:8000/
$ restic -r rest:https://user:pass@host:8000/my_backup_repo/

If you use TLS, restic will use the system’s CA certificates to verify the server certificate. When the verification fails, restic refuses to proceed and exits with an error. If you have your own self-signed certificate, or a custom CA certificate should be used for verification, you can pass restic the certificate filename via the --cacert option. It will then verify that the server’s certificate is contained in the file passed to this option, or signed by a CA certificate in the file. In this case, the system CA certificates are not considered at all.

REST server uses exactly the same directory structure as local backend, so you should be able to access it both locally and via HTTP, even simultaneously.

Amazon S3

Restic can backup data to any Amazon S3 bucket. However, in this case, changing the URL scheme is not enough since Amazon uses special security credentials to sign HTTP requests. By consequence, you must first setup the following environment variables with the credentials you obtained while creating the bucket.

$ export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<MY_ACCESS_KEY>
$ export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<MY_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>

You can then easily initialize a repository that uses your Amazon S3 as a backend. If the bucket does not exist it will be created in the default location:

$ restic -r s3:s3.amazonaws.com/bucket_name init
enter password for new backend:
enter password again:
created restic backend eefee03bbd at s3:s3.amazonaws.com/bucket_name
Please note that knowledge of your password is required to access the repository.
Losing your password means that your data is irrecoverably lost.

If needed, you can manually specify the region to use by either setting the environment variable AWS_DEFAULT_REGION or calling restic with an option parameter like -o s3.region="us-east-1". If the region is not specified, the default region is used. Afterwards, the S3 server (at least for AWS, s3.amazonaws.com) will redirect restic to the correct endpoint.

Until version 0.8.0, restic used a default prefix of restic, so the files in the bucket were placed in a directory named restic. If you want to access a repository created with an older version of restic, specify the path after the bucket name like this:

$ restic -r s3:s3.amazonaws.com/bucket_name/restic [...]

For an S3-compatible server that is not Amazon (like Minio, see below), or is only available via HTTP, you can specify the URL to the server like this: s3:http://server:port/bucket_name.

Minio Server

Minio is an Open Source Object Storage, written in Go and compatible with AWS S3 API.

  • Download and Install Minio Server.
  • You can also refer to https://docs.minio.io for step by step guidance on installation and getting started on Minio Client and Minio Server.

You must first setup the following environment variables with the credentials of your Minio Server.

$ export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<YOUR-MINIO-ACCESS-KEY-ID>
$ export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY= <YOUR-MINIO-SECRET-ACCESS-KEY>

Now you can easily initialize restic to use Minio server as backend with this command.

$ ./restic -r s3:http://localhost:9000/restic init
enter password for new backend:
enter password again:
created restic backend 6ad29560f5 at s3:http://localhost:9000/restic1
Please note that knowledge of your password is required to access
the repository. Losing your password means that your data is irrecoverably lost.

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:

# For keystone v1 authentication
$ export ST_AUTH=<MY_AUTH_URL>
$ export ST_USER=<MY_USER_NAME>
$ export ST_KEY=<MY_USER_PASSWORD>

# For keystone v2 authentication (some variables are optional)
$ export OS_AUTH_URL=<MY_AUTH_URL>
$ export OS_REGION_NAME=<MY_REGION_NAME>
$ export OS_USERNAME=<MY_USERNAME>
$ export OS_PASSWORD=<MY_PASSWORD>
$ export OS_TENANT_ID=<MY_TENANT_ID>
$ export OS_TENANT_NAME=<MY_TENANT_NAME>

# For keystone v3 authentication (some variables are optional)
$ export OS_AUTH_URL=<MY_AUTH_URL>
$ export OS_REGION_NAME=<MY_REGION_NAME>
$ export OS_USERNAME=<MY_USERNAME>
$ export OS_PASSWORD=<MY_PASSWORD>
$ export OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME=<MY_DOMAIN_NAME>
$ export OS_PROJECT_NAME=<MY_PROJECT_NAME>
$ export OS_PROJECT_DOMAIN_NAME=<MY_PROJECT_DOMAIN_NAME>

# For keystone v3 application credential authentication (application credential id)
$ export OS_AUTH_URL=<MY_AUTH_URL>
$ export OS_APPLICATION_CREDENTIAL_ID=<MY_APPLICATION_CREDENTIAL_ID>
$ export OS_APPLICATION_CREDENTIAL_SECRET=<MY_APPLICATION_CREDENTIAL_SECRET>

# For keystone v3 application credential authentication (application credential name)
$ export OS_AUTH_URL=<MY_AUTH_URL>
$ export OS_USERNAME=<MY_USERNAME>
$ export OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME=<MY_DOMAIN_NAME>
$ export OS_APPLICATION_CREDENTIAL_NAME=<MY_APPLICATION_CREDENTIAL_NAME>
$ export OS_APPLICATION_CREDENTIAL_SECRET=<MY_APPLICATION_CREDENTIAL_SECRET>

# For authentication based on tokens
$ export OS_STORAGE_URL=<MY_STORAGE_URL>
$ export OS_AUTH_TOKEN=<MY_AUTH_TOKEN>

Restic should be compatible with an OpenStack RC file in most cases.

Once environment variables are set up, a new repository can be created. The name of the Swift container and optional path can be specified. If the container does not exist, it will be created automatically:

$ restic -r swift:container_name:/path init   # path is optional
enter password for new backend:
enter password again:
created restic backend eefee03bbd at swift:container_name:/path
Please note that knowledge of your password is required to access the repository.
Losing your password means that your data is irrecoverably lost.

The policy of the new container created by restic can be changed using environment variable:

$ export SWIFT_DEFAULT_CONTAINER_POLICY=<MY_CONTAINER_POLICY>

Backblaze B2

Restic can backup data to any Backblaze B2 bucket. You need to first setup the following environment variables with the credentials you can find in the dashboard on the “Buckets” page when signed into your B2 account:

$ export B2_ACCOUNT_ID=<MY_APPLICATION_KEY_ID>
$ export B2_ACCOUNT_KEY=<MY_APPLICATION_KEY>

Note

As of version 0.9.2, restic supports both master and non-master application keys. If using a non-master application key, ensure that it is created with at least read and write access to the B2 bucket. On earlier versions of restic, a master application key is required.

You can then initialize a repository stored at Backblaze B2. If the bucket does not exist yet and the credentials you passed to restic have the privilege to create buckets, it will be created automatically:

$ restic -r b2:bucketname:path/to/repo init
enter password for new backend:
enter password again:
created restic backend eefee03bbd at b2:bucketname:path/to/repo
Please note that knowledge of your password is required to access the repository.
Losing your password means that your data is irrecoverably lost.

Note that the bucket name must be unique across all of B2.

The number of concurrent connections to the B2 service can be set with the -o b2.connections=10 switch. By default, at most five parallel connections are established.

Microsoft Azure Blob Storage

You can also store backups on Microsoft Azure Blob Storage. Export the Azure account name and key as follows:

$ export AZURE_ACCOUNT_NAME=<ACCOUNT_NAME>
$ export AZURE_ACCOUNT_KEY=<SECRET_KEY>

Afterwards you can initialize a repository in a container called foo in the root path like this:

$ restic -r azure:foo:/ init
enter password for new backend:
enter password again:

created restic backend a934bac191 at azure:foo:/
[...]

The number of concurrent connections to the Azure Blob Storage service can be set with the -o azure.connections=10 switch. By default, at most five parallel connections are established.

Google Cloud Storage

Restic supports Google Cloud Storage as a backend and connects via a service account.

For normal restic operation, the service account must have the storage.objects.{create,delete,get,list} permissions for the bucket. These are included in the “Storage Object Admin” role. restic init can create the repository bucket. Doing so requires the storage.buckets.create permission (“Storage Admin” role). If the bucket already exists, that permission is unnecessary.

To use the Google Cloud Storage backend, first create a service account key and download the JSON credentials file. Second, find the Google Project ID that you can see in the Google Cloud Platform console at the “Storage/Settings” menu. Export the path to the JSON key file and the project ID as follows:

$ export GOOGLE_PROJECT_ID=123123123123
$ export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=$HOME/.config/gs-secret-restic-key.json

Restic uses Google’s client library to generate default authentication material, which means if you’re running in Google Container Engine or are otherwise located on an instance with default service accounts then these should work out of the box.

Once authenticated, you can use the gs: backend type to create a new repository in the bucket foo at the root path:

$ restic -r gs:foo:/ init
enter password for new backend:
enter password again:

created restic backend bde47d6254 at gs:foo2/
[...]

The number of concurrent connections to the GCS service can be set with the -o gs.connections=10 switch. By default, at most five parallel connections are established.

Other Services via rclone

The program rclone can be used to access many other different services and store data there. First, you need to install and configure rclone. The general backend specification format is rclone:<remote>:<path>, the <remote>:<path> component will be directly passed to rclone. When you configure a remote named foo, you can then call restic as follows to initiate a new repository in the path bar in the repo:

$ restic -r rclone:foo:bar init

Restic takes care of starting and stopping rclone.

As a more concrete example, suppose you have configured a remote named b2prod for Backblaze B2 with rclone, with a bucket called yggdrasil. You can then use rclone to list files in the bucket like this:

$ rclone ls b2prod:yggdrasil

In order to create a new repository in the root directory of the bucket, call restic like this:

$ restic -r rclone:b2prod:yggdrasil init

If you want to use the path foo/bar/baz in the bucket instead, pass this to restic:

$ restic -r rclone:b2prod:yggdrasil/foo/bar/baz init

Listing the files of an empty repository directly with rclone should return a listing similar to the following:

$ rclone ls b2prod:yggdrasil/foo/bar/baz
    155 bar/baz/config
    448 bar/baz/keys/4bf9c78049de689d73a56ed0546f83b8416795295cda12ec7fb9465af3900b44

Rclone can be configured with environment variables, so for instance configuring a bandwidth limit for rclone can be achieved by setting the RCLONE_BWLIMIT environment variable:

$ export RCLONE_BWLIMIT=1M

For debugging rclone, you can set the environment variable RCLONE_VERBOSE=2.

The rclone backend has two additional options:

  • -o rclone.program specifies the path to rclone, the default value is just rclone
  • -o rclone.args allows setting the arguments passed to rclone, by default this is serve restic --stdio --b2-hard-delete --drive-use-trash=false

The reason for the two last parameters (--b2-hard-delete and --drive-use-trash=false) can be found in the corresponding GitHub issue #1657.

In order to start rclone, restic will build a list of arguments by joining the following lists (in this order): rclone.program, rclone.args and as the last parameter the value that follows the rclone: prefix of the repository specification.

So, calling restic like this

$ restic -o rclone.program="/path/to/rclone" \
  -o rclone.args="serve restic --stdio --bwlimit 1M --b2-hard-delete --verbose" \
  -r rclone:b2:foo/bar

runs rclone as follows:

$ /path/to/rclone serve restic --stdio --bwlimit 1M --b2-hard-delete --verbose b2:foo/bar

Manually setting rclone.program also allows running a remote instance of rclone e.g. via SSH on a server, for example:

$ restic -o rclone.program="ssh user@host rclone" -r rclone:b2:foo/bar

The rclone command may also be hard-coded in the SSH configuration or the user’s public key, in this case it may be sufficient to just start the SSH connection (and it’s irrelevant what’s passed after rclone: in the repository specification):

$ restic -o rclone.program="ssh user@host" -r rclone:x

Password prompt on Windows

At the moment, restic only supports the default Windows console interaction. If you use emulation environments like MSYS2 or Cygwin, which use terminals like Mintty or rxvt, you may get a password error.

You can workaround this by using a special tool called winpty (look here and here for detail information). On MSYS2, you can install winpty as follows:

$ pacman -S winpty
$ winpty restic -r /srv/restic-repo init