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

  • nickiam2@aussie.zoneEnglish
    4·
    13 hours ago

    Are you using B2 or S3? Setting both might be causing it to get confused. The bucket name needs to be appended to the end of the S3 or B2 URL like “s3:b2.backblaze.com/<bucket_name>” inside the RESTIC_REPOSITORY variable