Automatic backups with restic and systemd services
feldspaten.org
Restic is a mature, effective and secure backup solution that covers a wide range of use cases. I use it heavily for all of my backups. The program itself is peak open source: it’s free (as in BSD-2-Clause license), runs on any modern OS, runs on systems low on resources and it can be learned in 30 minutes by reading the well-written documentation. It provides almost everything you need. Except for one thing, which we’re looking at today: Fully automated backups using a systemd service and timer.

I’m having trouble automating the restic backup using systemd.

I followed the linked guide, which seems pretty straightforward. Backup works fine when I run it manually, but when I try to run systemctl status restic-backup.service I get the following error: Fatal: parsing repository location failed: s3: bucket name not found

I have triple-checked the file paths, and also added PassEnvironment=AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY RESTIC_REPOSITORY RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE B2_ACCOUNT_ID B2_ACCOUNT_KEY to the restic-backup.service file, which I saw used elsewhere. This is my first time using systemd, so I’m not sure if I am overlooking an obvious step or what.

OS: Xubuntu

restic: installed locally following these steps

backup: Backblaze B2 bucket with s3

  • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.socialEnglish
    3·
    15 hours ago

    My recommendation is to put all of the variables in an environment file, and use systemd’s EnvironmentFile (in [Service] to point to it.

    One of my backup service files (I back up to disks and cloud) looks like this:

    [Unit]
Description=Backup to MyUsbDrive
Requires=media-MyUsbDrive.mount
After=media-MyUsbDrive.mount

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/etc/backup/environment
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/restic backup --tag=prefailure-2 --files-from ${FILES} --exclude-file ${EXCLUDES} --one-file-system

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.timer

    FILES is a file containing files and directories to be backed up, and is defined in the environment file; so is EXCLUDES, but you could simply point restic at the directory you want to back up instead.

    My environment file looks essentially like

    RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/mnt/MyUsbDrive/backup
RESTIC_PASSWORD=blahblahblah
KEEP_DAILY=7
KEEP_MONTHLY=3
KEEP_YEARLY=2
EXCLUDES=/etc/backup/excludes
FILES=/etc/backup/files

    If you’re having trouble, start by looking at how you’re passing in the password, and whether it’s quoted properly. It’s been a couple of years since I had this issue, but at one point I know I had spaces in a passphrase and had quoted the variable, and the quotes were getting passed in verbatim.

    My VPS backups are more complex and get their passwords from a keystore, but for my desktop I keep it simple.

    • dgdft@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      14 hours ago

      Seconding this answer. The error message and description scream envvar issue.

      This is my first time using systemd, so I’m not sure if I am overlooking an obvious step or what.

      @gedaliyah@lemmy.world Did you run a systemctl daemon-reload after making the PassEnvironment change to your service file?