Usage

restictool is a Python wrapper to the dockerized restic backup tool.

The tool allows to backup docker volumes and local directories, to restore a snapshot to a local directory, to run arbitrary restic commands and just to check the configuration file.

restictool -h|--help
restictool COMMAND [-h|--help]
restictool [TOOL_ARGS...] COMMAND [COMMAND_ARGS...] [--] [...]

The rest of the arguments is passed to the restic command. In case the such argument is a one recognized by the command as well, use -- as a separator. Any unrecognized argument starting with the dash is also passed to the restic command, check this if you are getting weird errors.

As seen from the restic the snapshots created with the backup commands are /volume/VOLNAME for docker volumes and /localdir/TAG for locally specified ones. This needs to be considered when specifying inclusion or exclusion filters for both backup and restore. If for example /a/b is being backed up as my_dir, the original file a/b/c/d is seen as /localdir/my_dir/c/d.

The container running restic gets a restictool.local added to the hosts pointing to the gateway of the first IPAM configuration in the default bridge network. You can use this for tunneled setups.

Common arguments

-h, --help

show the help message and exit. If COMMAND is present, shows the help for the command

-c FILE, --config FILE

the configuration file (default: ~/.config/restic/restictool.yml)

--cache DIR

the cache directory (default: ~/.cache/restic)

--image IMAGE

the docker restic image name (default: restic/restic)

--force-pull

force pulling of the docker image first

--log-level

log level for the tool (critical, error, warning, info, debug, default: warning). This applies to the tool itself; messages from the restic are written to the standard output directly and can be silenced by -q passed to either for this tool or the restic command

-q, --quiet

Pass the -q option to the restic command

COMMAND

one of backup, restore, snapshots, run, dockerdr, exists or check

Restore arguments

-r DIR, --restore DIR

directory to restore to. This argument is mandatory.

SNAPSHOT

snapshot to restore from

The snapshot to restore from is taken from the next argument; if not present it defaults to latest. A common way to restore is --path /localdir/my_name finding the latest snapshot containing the specified local directory.

The directory will be created if it does not exist. Note that as the restored files are written from inside the docker container they will be written from the context of the root user. Watch for mishaps.

Docker disaster recovery arguments

The docker disaster recovery restores all the volumes existing both on the local system and the backup to the latest snapshot. The list of the volumes in the configuration is ignored, as are volume-specific options.

The data are restored to a directory derived from the mountpoint of the volume, meaning that if the volume resides on /var/lib/docker/volumes/foo/_data it will be restored to /var/lib/docker/volumes/foo/_data.restored.

Snapshots arguments

Any argument is passed to the restic snapshots directly. --latest 1 is a common one.

Run arguments

Any argument is passed to the restic directly.

Configuration file

The restictool needs a configuration file (default ~/.config/restic/restictool.yml) to specify the restic repository configuration. As the file contains secrets such as the repository password, take care to set reasonable permissions. The file is in the YAML format.

Repository configuration

repository:
    location: "s3:https://somewhere:8010/restic-backups"
    password: "MySecretPassword"
    host: myhost
    network_from: myvpncontainer
    authentication:
        AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: "S3:SomeKeyId"
        AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: "someSecret"
    extra:
        RESTIC_PACK_SIZE: "64"

location and password are mandatory. All other fields are optional.

password specifies the restic repository password. Fetching the repository location or password from a file or command is not supported.

host defaults to the hostname of the machine the restictool is executed on. It only applies to backup.

The optional network_from specifies the name of the container to reuse the network stack from. This allows using VPN tunnels or other non-standard networking. The container has to be already started.

authentication contains restic environment variables used to authenticate against the target repository. Typical ones are AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID or AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY. extra contains other variables such as RESTIC_COMPRESSION. This is only an logical division and both sets of variables will be merged.

The variable names will be converted to uppercase and the values passed 1:1. Some variables cannot be defined (for example RESTIC_CACHE_DIR or RESTIC_PASSWORD).

Logging configuration

If the default of logging to the standard error is not suitable, the logging configuration can be provided via the logging key. The content has to conform to the Python logging facility dictionary schema. If provided, the --log-level command-line option is used to set the level for the logger named console, if there is any.

The following extra arguments can be used in the formatters: operation, repoLocation, repoHost, object, elapsed meaning the performed operation, repository location and name, the object being backed up and the time the operation took. All are strings except the elapsed time that is in seconds as float.

CAUTION: The DEBUG level logs sensitive information such as secret keys and passwords.

logging:
    version: 1
    root:
        handlers:
            - console
            - file
            - syslog
        level: INFO
    handlers:
        console:
            class: logging.StreamHandler
            level: INFO
            formatter: detailed
            stream: ext://sys.stderr
        file:
            class: logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler
            level: INFO
            formatter: detailed
            filename: /tmp/restictool.log
            maxBytes: 65536
            backupCount: 3
        syslog:
            class: logging.handlers.SysLogHandler
            level: INFO
            address: !!python/tuple ["my.syslog.lan",514]
            facility: daemon
            formatter: syslog
    formatters:
        detailed:
            format: '%(asctime)s %(levelname)s op=%(operation)s repo=%(repoLocation)s host=%(repoHost)s object=%(object)s time=%(elapsed).1fs msg=%(message)s'
            datefmt: '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
        syslog:
            format: 'restictool[%(process)d] %(levelname)s op=%(operation)s repo=%(repoLocation)s host=%(repoHost)s object=%(object)s time=%(elapsed).1fs msg=%(message)s'

Observability

The backups done can be exported through prometheus text-file format and consumed by the node exporter's textfile collector. If the metrics key exists, the file is atomically populated after each backup run by the data of the latest snapshots.

metrics:
    directory: "/var/local/lib/prom_metrics"
    suffix: "s3"

directory is mandatory and specifies the path of the directory passed as the --collector.textfile.directory for the node_exporter. It has to already exist. suffix is optional and will be appended to the file name to distinguish metrics files generated by different restictool configurations. For the above configuration the full file name will be /var/local/lib/prom_metrics/restictool-s3.prom.

Command-line options for restic

options:
    common:
        - "--insecure-tls"
    forget:
        - ...
    prune:
        - ...
    volume:
        - ...
    localdir:
        - ...

This section specifies the command-line options to be used when executing the restic. common ones are used for any run, volume ones are added to common ones when backing up a docker volume and localdir ones when backing up a local directory. The run and restore commands get just the common ones.

If forget is present a restic forget is run after the backup is completed with these arguments. If 'DEFAULT' is specified for forget it is expanded to --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 5 --keep-monthly 12.

If prune is specified, a restic prune is run following the forget, with the specified arguments (if any). Note that this can be costly on a cloud storage charging for API calls and downloads.

Volume backup specification

volumes:
  - name: my_volume
    options:
      - '--exclude="/volume/my_volume/some_dir"'
      - "--exclude-caches"

volumes is a list of the docker volumes to backup when running the backup command. options will be used when backing up the specified volume.

volumes:
  - name: '*'
    exclude:
      - without_this_volume
    options:
      - '--exclude="/volume/my_volume/some_dir"'
      - "--exclude-caches"

If the name is '*', all non-anonymous (not 48+ hex characters) volumes that are not mentioned in the exclude list are backed up. If there is both * and a specific name, the options will come from the specific one and if not found, from the wildcard one. If the name is not '*', exclude is ignored.

Local directory backup specification

localdirs:
  - name: my_tag
    path: path
    options:
      - '--exclude="/localdir/my_tag/some_dir"'

localdirs is a list of the local directories to backup when running the backup command. name specifies the tag that will be used to distinguish the directories in the repository. options will be used when backing up the specified local directory. Tildes (~) at the beginning of path will be expanded to the contents of the HOME environment variable.