resticprofile

Configuration profiles manager for restic backup

resticprofile is the missing link between a configuration file and restic backup. Creating a configuration file for restic has been discussed before, but seems to be a very low priority right now.

With resticprofile:

  • You no longer need to remember command parameters and environment variables
  • You can create multiple profiles inside one configuration file
  • A profile can inherit all the options from another profile
  • You can run the forget command before or after a backup (in a section called retention)
  • You can check a repository before or after a backup
  • You can create groups of profiles that will run sequentially
  • You can run shell commands before or after running a profile: useful if you need to mount and unmount your backup disk for example
  • You can run a shell command if an error occurred (at any time)
  • You can send a backup stream via stdin
  • You can start restic at a lower or higher priority (Priority Class in Windows, nice in all unixes) and/or ionice (only available on Linux)
  • It can check that you have enough memory before starting a backup. (I’ve had some backups that literally killed a server with swap disabled)
  • You can generate cryptographically secure random keys to use as a restic key file
  • You can easily schedule backups, retentions and checks (works for systemd, crond, launchd and windows task scheduler)
  • You can generate a simple status file to send to some monitoring software and make sure your backups are running fine
  • You can use a template syntax in your configuration file
  • You can generate scheduled tasks using crond
  • Get backup statistics in your status file
  • Automatically clear up stale locks
  • Export a prometheus file after a backup, or send the report to a push gateway automatically
  • [new for v0.17.0] Run shell commands in the background when non fatal errors are detected from restic
  • [new for v0.18.0] Send messages to HTTP hooks before, after a successful or failed job (backup, forget, check, prune, copy)
  • [new for v0.18.0] Automatically initialize the secondary repository using copy-chunker-params flag
  • [new for v0.18.0] Send resticprofile logs to a syslog server
  • [new for v0.19.0] Preventing your system from idle sleeping
  • [new for v0.21.0] See the help from both restic and resticprofile via the help command or -h flag
  • [new for v0.24.0] Don’t schedule a job when the system is running on battery
  • [new for v0.29.0] Scheduling a group of profiles is finally available (configuration v2 only)

The configuration file accepts various formats:

  • TOML : configuration file with extension .toml and .conf to keep compatibility with versions before 0.6.0
  • JSON : configuration file with extension .json
  • YAML : configuration file with extension .yaml
  • HCL: configuration file with extension .hcl