Autorestic is a wrapper around the amazing [restic](https://restic.net/). While being amazing the restic cli can be a bit overwhelming and difficoult to manage if you have many different location that you want to backup to multiple locations. This utility is aimed at making this easier 🙂
First we need to configure our locations and backends. Simply create a `.autorestic.yml` either in your home directory of in the folder from which you will execute `autorestic`.
Then we check if everything is correct by running the `check` command. We will pass the `-a` (or `--all`) to tell autorestic to check all the locations.
If we would check only one location we could run the following: `autorestic check -l home`. Otherwise simpply check all locations with `autorestic check -a`
Note that the data is automatically encrypted on the server. The key will be generated and added to your config file. Every backend will have a separate key. You should keep a copy of the keys somewhere in case your server dies. Otherwise DATA IS LOST!
Autorestic can update itself! Super handy right? Simply run `autorestic update` and we will check for you if there are updates for restic and autorestic and install them if necessary.
A location simply a folder on your machine that restic will backup. The paths can be relative from the config file. A location can have multiple backends, so that the data is secured across multiple servers.
Autorestic supports declaring snapshot policies for location to avoid keeping old snapshot around if you don't need them.
This is based on [Restic's snapshots policies](https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/060_forget.html#removing-snapshots-according-to-a-policy), and can be enabled for each location as shown below:
Pruning can be triggered using `autorestic forget -a`, for all locations, or selectively with `autorestic forget -l <location>`. **please note that contrary to the restic CLI, `restic forget` will call `restic prune` internally.**
Run with the `--dry-run` flag to only print information about the process without actually pruning the snapshots. This is especially useful for debugging or testing policies:
```
$ autorestic forget -a --dry-run --verbose
Configuring Backends
local : Done ✓
Removing old shapshots according to policy
etc ▶ local : Removing old spnapshots… ⏳
etc ▶ local : Running in dry-run mode, not touching data
etc ▶ local : Forgeting old snapshots… ⏳Applying Policy: all snapshots within 2d of the newest
If you want to exclude certain files or folders it done easily by specifiyng the right flags in the location you desire to filter. The flags are taken straight from the [restic cli exclude rules](https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/040_backup.html#excluding-files).
Sometimes you might want to stop an app/db before backing up data and start the service again after the backup has completed. This is what the hooks are made for. Simply add them to your location config. You can have as many commands as you wish.
Since version 0.13 autorestic supports docker volumes directly, without needing them to be mounted to the host filesystem.
Let see an example.
###### docker-compose.yml
```yaml
version: '3.7'
volumes:
data:
name: my-data
services:
api:
image: alpine
volumes:
- data:/foo/bar
```
###### .autorestic.yml
```yaml
locations:
hello:
from: 'volume:my-data'
to:
- remote
options:
forget:
keep-last: 2
backends:
remote:
...
```
Now you can backup and restore as always.
```sh
autorestic -l hello backup
```
```sh
autorestic -l hello restore
```
If the volume does not exist on restore, autorestic will create it for you and then fill it with the data.
### Limitations
Unfortunately there are some limitations when backing up directly from a docker volume without mounting the volume to the host. If you are curious or have ideas how to improve this, please [read more here](https://github.com/cupcakearmy/autorestic/issues/4#issuecomment-568771951). Any help is welcomed 🙂
1. Incremental updates are not possible right now due to how the current docker mounting works.
2. Exclude patterns and files also do not work as restic only sees a compressed tarball as source and not the actual data.
Shows all the information in the config file. Usefull for a quick overview of what location backups where.
Pro tip: if it gets a bit long you can read it more easily with `autorestic info | less` 😉
### Check
```
autorestic check [-b, --backend] [-a, --all]
```
Checks the backends and configures them if needed. Can be applied to all with the `-a` flag or by specifying one or more backends with the `-b` or `--backend` flag.
### Backup
```
autorestic backup [-l, --location] [-a, --all]
```
Performes a backup of all locations if the `-a` flag is passed. To only backup some locations pass one or more `-l` or `--location` flags.
This will restore all the locations to the selected target. If for one location there are more than one backends specified autorestic will take the first one.
Lets see a more realistic example (from the config above)
```
autorestic restore -l home --from hdd --to /path/where/to/restore
```
This will restore the location `home` to the `/path/where/to/restore` folder and taking the data from the backend `hdd`
This will prune and remove old data form the backends according to the [keep policy you have specified for the location](#pruning-and-snapshot-policies)
The `--dry-run` flag will do a dry run showing what would have been deleted, but won't touch the actual data.
This is avery handy command which enables you to run any native restic command on desired backends. An example would be listing all the snapshots of all your backends:
