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Set up Backups with Restic

Install restic-snapshot command

Install the emergence/restic-snapshot command:

hab pkg install emergence/restic-snapshot

Provision bucket

Create a bucket and obtain access credentials at a low-cost cloud object storage host:

  1. Add an Object Storage bucket
  2. Create an Access key
  1. Provision B2 bucket - Select Private - Enable Object Lock
  2. Provision B2 app key - Use same name as bucket - Only allow access to created bucket - Select Read and Write access - Do not allow listing all bucket names - Do not set file name prefix or duration

Build restic environment

Create a secure file to store needed environment variables for the restic client to read and write to the encrypted repository bucket:

RESTIC_REPOSITORY=s3:us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/restic-myhost
RESTIC_PASSWORD=

# Access Key:
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=

# Secret Key:
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=

RESTIC_REPOSITORY=b2:restic-myhost
RESTIC_PASSWORD=

# keyID:
B2_ACCOUNT_ID=

# applicationKey:
B2_ACCOUNT_KEY=
  1. Create /etc/restic.env from above template
  2. Tailor RESTIC_REPOSITORY to created bucket
  3. Generate RESTIC_PASSWORD and save to credential vault
  4. Fill storage credentials
  5. Secure configuration:
    sudo chmod 660 /etc/restic.env

Initialize repository

Load the environment into your current shell to run Restic’s one-time init command to set up the encrypted repository structure within the bucket:

set -a; source /etc/restic.env; set +a
hab pkg exec emergence/restic-snapshot restic init

Create backup script

  1. Create /etc/cron.daily/emergence-restic-backup

    #!/bin/bash

/bin/hab pkg exec emergence/restic-snapshot snapshot

  2. Max executable:

    chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/emergence-restic-backup

Run manually

To verify the configuration and create an initial snapshot:

/etc/cron.daily/emergence-restic-backup

Verifying backups

  1. Load environment:

    set -a; source /etc/restic.env; set +a

  2. List snapshots:

    hab pkg exec emergence/restic-snapshot restic snapshots

  3. Examine contents of an SQL dump:

    hab pkg exec emergence/restic-snapshot restic dump ced0825f /database.sql | grep '^CREATE'