restic-scripts - Restic backup scripts and systemd files

These are the simple (and hopefully straightforward) bash scripts that I use to keep backups sane on my system; hopefully they can serve as an example for setting up your own regular backups!

I'm using a multi-tiered approach:

• hourly local backups to a secondary physical disk
• daily NAS backups
• weekly-ish cloud backups to Backblaze's B2 service

I keep the last seven daily backup snapshots, last four weekly, and last three monthly in each. Obviously that doesn't jive with my B2 schedule, but that one's still being run by hand while I figure out how I want it to work.

NOTE: You'll have to edit these scripts before you can use them yourself, I've replaced all the paths and API keys and whatnot that are specific to my setup.

Things You Need

You'll need a few things to set up a similar system:

• restic - Your distro probably has this available, but it also works on macOS and Windows: https://restic.net/
• systemd - If your OS doesn't use systemd, you'll have to set up your own periodic runs using cron or whatever.
• A local target for backups. If you don't have a second physical device for this, a separate partition will still protect you from filesystem disasters on your root partition.
• A network target for backups. Totally optional, but handy if your main system dies and you don't want to wait to download your data from the cloud. This protects you from computer disasters like a dying hard drive. I use a two-bay Synology DiskStation, but there are lots of options. For simplicity, I mount the share directly; if you're doing something else, check the Restic docs.
• A cloud target for backups. Again, totally optional, but it protects you from major disasters like your house burning down. I'm using Backblaze B2 because I really like their backup service on macOS and Windows, and it's really cheap for this type of storage. Sure wish they had a Linux client for the backup service though. Here is the restic documentation for using B2.

The scripts use notify-send to send desktop notifications; on my system (OpenSUSE), I had to install the libnotify-tools package to get this.

The Scripts

The bin directory contains the bash scripts I use for doing backups. I keep them in $HOME/bin and they don't require any special permissions.

The systemd directory contains the .service and .timer files. These go in $HOME/.config/systemd/user and are enabled via systemctl commands like:

$ systemctl --user enable backup-local.service
...
$ systemctl --user enable backup-local.timer
...

The intent of enabling the .service is to have it run when I log in, but also when the timer goes off. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, I'm new to systemd.

Note: You'll have to edit the .service files to point to wherever you've put the backup-*.sh scripts.

The restic-excludes file also lives in $HOME/.config; it lists directories that I don't want to back up, generally because I can just download the contents again via cloud services.

License

This is all MIT-licensed, so go nuts.