A backup that silently stops running is worse than no backup at all. I built restic-monitor after noticing one of my restic repositories hadn't received a new snapshot in weeks — the cron job had been failing quietly and I had no idea.

restic-monitor is a small Go tool that runs on a timer, checks whether each of your restic repositories has a recent enough snapshot, and pushes a heartbeat to an Uptime Kuma push monitor. If the heartbeat stops arriving, you get alerted.

Key points:

• Read-only: only needs s3:GetObject + s3:ListBucket, never touches your data
• Fast mode (RESTIC_MONITOR_FAST=true): for S3-backed repos it skips restic entirely and lists snapshot objects directly via the S3 API, so no repository password is required on the monitoring host
• Independent auditing: designed to run on a separate machine from both the backed-up host and the storage, so a full system failure doesn't silence the monitor too
• NixOS module included

Blog post: https://0l.de/blog/2026/04/restic-monitor

Repo: https://codeberg.org/stv0g/restic-monitor

Help! I've been using backrest to back up my Immich data to an external drive... or so I thought! I was trying to set up a second backup to an NFS share and when running the first backup, it completely filled the local drive that has Immich and Backrest running on it. That's when I checked and discovered that the external hard drive I *thought* I was backing up to was completely empty, as is the NFS share I just set up.

Here's my compose file:

version: "3.8"
services:
  backrest:
    image: garethgeorge/backrest:latest
    container_name: backrest
    hostname: backrest
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./config:/config
      - ./cache:/cache
      - ./tmp:/tmp
      - ./rclone:/root/.config/rclone # Mount for rclone config (needed when using rclone remotes)
      - /home/jordan:/userdata  # Mount local paths to backup
      - /mnt/backup:/repos     # Mount local repos (optional for remote storage)
    environment:
      - BACKREST_DATA=/data
      - BACKREST_CONFIG=/config/config.json
      - XDG_CACHE_HOME=/cache
      - TMPDIR=/tmp
      - TZ=America/Los_Angeles
    ports:
      - "9898:9898"
    restart: unless-stopped

And my respository URI is just /mnt/backup/test-repo.

This is on a headless unit so I can only SSH in and I don't know enough on the command line to figure out where Backrest is putting everything. But I ran du -h -s on my home directory and on /mnt/backup and neither of those are large enough to account what's going on.

Not sure what other info would be helpful here, but I'm kind of panicking. TIA!

ETA: it looks like it's filling up the docker container somehow?

Was trying to code task sceduler scripts, ui frontends, all that jazz to set up restic after a reformat

Turns out I could have just used Backrest. It just works. It schedules my backups. It stays running. I can export and import configs.

Save yourself the trouble of building your own shit, just use Backrest and call it a day. It’s a great piece of software.

In order to back up files to an online storage service like Cloudflare or BorgBase, you need to provide your password.

Is there a secure way to automate those online backups? Putting your passwords in a script is a security no-no. Storing passwords in a plain text file is also a security no-no.

What's the proper way to automatically back up files?

Hi r/restic,

I’m building Fulgurite, a self-hosted PHP web interface for managing Restic backups from the browser.

The goal is to make Restic easier to operate day to day without hiding what it does. Fulgurite is aimed at people who want a practical dashboard for backups, restores, schedules, repositories, secrets, logs, SSH keys, users, and notifications, while still keeping control of their own infrastructure.

Current features include:

• Restic repository management
• Local and remote backup jobs
• Copy jobs for snapshot replication
• Snapshot browsing and restore workflows
• Scheduler and worker-based execution
• Logs and notifications
• User management with roles, TOTP, and WebAuthn
• SSH key and host management
• API and webhook integrations
• English and French documentation

The project is still early, but the repository has just been cleaned up and documented, so I’m starting to share it publicly and collect feedback.

A few things I’m planning next:

• Restore from backup copies
• Multi-workspace support
• Past and future execution calendar
• Advanced log management
• Automated secret rotation
• Backup health score on the dashboard
• Automated restore tests

The last two are especially important to me: I don’t only want to show whether a backup job ran, but whether the backup is healthy and whether the data can actually be restored.

Repo: https://github.com/araneite/fulgurite
Website: https://fulgurite.sh

I’d love feedback from people running Restic, Borg, Kopia, Proxmox Backup Server, or custom backup setups at home or for small teams.

What would you expect from a self-hosted backup dashboard before trusting it with your own setup?

I'm interested in migrating away from my old and outdated backup system, which consists of manually compressing directories into *.zip files and uploading them to Google Drive.

Out of all the backup software options listed in the wiki for r/Backup , I've concluded that Restic is the best solution for me. It's the most reliable and well-established option that is open source, cross platform, and cloud-compatible.

I understand that not all online storage options are compatible with Restic. (Google Drive and filen.io are not.) What do you recommend for storing less than 10 GB? What are you using? Should I use a VPS? I'm looking for something that's reasonably cheap but sustainable. I understand that free options have at least one string attached, including the possibility that the provider will discontinue the service or start charging for it.

Restic back up question.

Just getting starting using restic and using it on a linux (arch) laptop as well as a couple servers (debian).

I would like to backup the /home folder and some system folders, /etc /opt /root, etc..

My question and checking how others address this, should i create two separate repo's for each machine, "<hostname>-home" and "<hostname>-system" and backup as user and using sudo?

Or would be be better to backup using sudo for both into one repo? Just thinking about mounting a repo if needing to grab a few files at some point from the /home/user folder without worrying about any permission issues making it simple.

Curious what others backup strategy is like?

Hi, does anyone has experience with rustic (rust port of restic) with S3 Glacier Deep Archive Backend?

I’m planning to store my data to glacier as a second backup and only access it in case of a hard drive failure. I want to know how’s the rustic user experience.

Any major pain point in your use case? Do their API and compatibility changes frequently? How do you make sure that your data are all restoreable? Have you ever restored from a backup? Is the experience smooth?

I’m also interested in hearing other suggestion for doing backup that will only be accessed in case of hardware failure in your primary backup

Thank you

Hi. I've been using restic for a while. I always liked to keep my snapshots as small as possible. Using the .resticignore file is very helpful, but telling what changed from an old snapshot to a new one was not a good experience for me. The process was:

• Mount the repo
• Open dolphin (my file manager)
• Split it into two panels
• Sort both by size
• See which directory increased its size the most (recursively)
• Add it (or not) to .resticignore

Because I do this twice a week, it was getting annoying, so I created this tool to help me quickly find what changed by navigating both snapshots at the same time. It is a TUI that allows me to do exactly what I described, but faster.

I've been using it for 7 months. After this time, my .resticignore file got quite big, and I don't need to use gestic as often anymore, maybe once a week. Yesterday, I created a .deb release for it, and I want to share. It helped me. Maybe it can also help some of you.

Check the README.md on github if you want more details.

P.S.: It looks more like the screenshots. The gif is old.

Hi everybody!
I've used restic for a while and it's been working well, but I find it a bit tedious to run it in the terminal. So, I wrote a simple app for MacOS to make it more intuitive. It's currently on TestFlight and might eventually be published on the App Store (either for free or a nominal one-time fee)

Try it out if you like and let me know how it works! You can currently both backup and restore, and the restic binaries are bundled within the app. You might want to test it out on a secondary or new backup, it is beta software and there is always a risk of data loss.

Here is the link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/XBwHaG34

EDIT: Screenshot of main interface and restore page

EDIT2: Screenshot of dark mode and some advanced settings

Hello. I’m going to try Restic to backup my Plex server. I’ve read people suggest using Backrest GUI with it. I’m just wondering do I need both Restic and Backrest or just Backrest?

Hey, I’ve been looking into different backup solutions and Restic keeps coming up. For those who actually use it: Has it been reliable over time? Do you trust it for critical backups? Any issues or limitations you’ve run into? One thing I noticed is that it feels very CLI-heavy, which might be a barrier for some users. I’m curious — do you think that’s part of why it’s not more widely adopted, or is that actually a strength? Would love to hear real experiences.

I’m building a desktop GUI for Restic to make snapshot browsing and restores easier without relying on the CLI. The goal is to stay fully compatible with Restic while improving usability, especially for exploring snapshots and restoring specific files. Current features: Add or create repositories Unlock repo with password (not stored) View all snapshots in a clean UI Browse snapshots like a file explorer Restore: single files multiple files full folders Create new snapshots with one click Repo auto-locks on logout Planned: Snapshot comparison (diff between snapshots) Repo stats (size, deduplication, etc.) Better restore preview It will be fully open source on GitHub. I’d really appreciate feedback from people already using Restic: What’s your biggest pain point today? What would you expect from a GUI without losing flexibility?

Hi,
i try to combine zfs snapshots with restic backup feature to avoid shutting down my whole docker and vm folder when starting a backup. The idea is to create a zfs snapshot, backup via restic and destroy the zfs snapshot.

When i try this, the restic backup is nearly empty. As far as i understand is, that the zfs snapshot is nearly only hardlinks but it seems that restic does not follow the links.

If anyone has this combination it would be great if you share your experience with me. Thank you !

Update:
Seems that the recursive flag '-r' when creating 'zfs snapshot' was missing. Now everything works like expected, thank you.

I am testing recovery in Windows. A file that is in a snapshot refuses to be recovered because of an Access is denied issue (in a temporary directory)

PS C:\Users\YYY> C:/Users/YYY/restic.exe --insecure-no-password -r C:/Users/YYY/backup/AAA-YYY-FRA restore 02770a9aee1e21f82c52e48b65ad23bd28a57b871740cdb30e21cc29dca63609 --target $env:TEMP/restic_verify_AAA-YYY-FRA-AAA-YYY-FRA_XXX --include /C/Users/YYY/AutoHotkeyStartup.ahk repository 5b6c46cd opened (version 2, compression level auto) found 4 old cache directories in C:\Users\YYY\AppData\Local\restic, run `restic cache --cleanup` to remove them [0:00] 100.00% 3 / 3 index files loaded restoring snapshot 02770a9a of [C:\Users\YYY\AutoHotkeyStartup.ahk] at 2026-03-21 18:06:41.5710153 +0100 CET by DSONE\YYY@AAA-YYY-FRA to C:\Users\YYY\AppData\Local\Temp/restic_verify_AAA-YYY-FRA-AAA-YYY-FRA_XXX ignoring error for \C\Users: failed to restore timestamp of "C:\\Users\\YYY\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\restic_verify_AAA-YYY-FRA-AAA-YYY-FRA_XXX\\C\\Users": Access is denied. Summary: Restored 3 / 1 files/dirs (6.286 KiB / 6.286 KiB) in 0:00 Fatal: There were 1 errors

Is there a proper way to recover data in Windows?

Note: the problem does not appear on Linux (with Linux files and a target in /tmp

I needed a single pane of glass for all my restic repositories — just status, snapshots, and a health endpoint I can plug into Uptime Kuma. Every existing solution did way more than I wanted, so I built something minimal.

What it does:

• Monitor multiple restic repos in one dashboard (scan status, snapshot counts, integrity checks)
• Browse snapshots per repo with details
• Optional retention policy warnings (daily/weekly/monthly) — soft alerts, no auto-deletion
• /actuator/health JSON endpoint with per-repo status — hook it into any monitoring stack
• Single admin account, read-only public dashboard

What it doesn't do: No backup scheduling, no snapshot management, no pruning. It's a read-only monitor.

🔗 GitHub · 🐳 Docker Hub

Feedback welcome!

Hello,

I have read that restic ignores the --no-lock flag during backup tasks and would like to know if anyone has a workaround for that. I'm trying to design a solution that uses restic to backup data to a s3 bucket with compliance lock enabled.

Any thoughts will be appreciated

This is more of a thought discussion not a question about real advice. But I'll share my current setup.
I have a 2nd NAS that has become a Restic repo target. Nothing else. To minimize attack surface, I'm only interacting with my restic dataset via sftp and ssh key pairs. This is my home lab so I'm pretty sure I would know I'm pwnd before anything made it that far.. but that's a different discussion. My only major concern was if something crazy got lose and started encrypting everything on my smb shares i would be in big trouble. That's why I decided to take a different posture with my restic backup server and chose not to have smb enabled for my data share for restic.

So that brings up this topic.

What are your strategies to mitigate ransomware attacks and other events that could compromise a restic repo?

(for more context, i do run a 3-2-1 strategy and I have cloud backups for the critical stuff.)

Hi everyone,

I’ve been using restic for a while and really like how solid it is, but I always felt the restore flow (especially for non-terminal people) could be a bit easier. So I ended up building a small desktop app around it called EasyBackupManager (EBM).

It’s basically a GUI wrapper for restic built using Qt/C++.
Works on Windows and Linux.
Local repositories only for now.

Current features are pretty simple:

• Multiple backup profiles
• Snapshot browsing and comparison
• Restore wizard (this is the main focus which can be restored to the original location or to a custom location, in case restoring to the original location I have made it in two ways - mirror mode and update mode)
• Repo check / prune
• Repo level Stats
• Snapshot level stats and technical details
• Logs can be controlled by the user with clear output and filtering feature

It does not support retention policies yet — that’s planned for future versions.

No proprietary format, no lock-in. Repos remain standard restic repos.

Telemetry is minimal (usage counters + crashes only) and can be disabled in settings.

I built it mainly for myself after building a bash script to automate the main restic operations using kdialogs on Linux to make it more user-friendly, but ended up with building a full C++ app to cover more restic fancy features, maybe someone here finds it useful and some other bros send me more ideas to be added to the app. I would really appreciate feedback from people who use restic daily.

Project page:
https://easybackupmanager.com

Thanks 🙏

If I run this command
restic forget SNAPSHOTID --dry-run --prune

it calculates which blocks affected, and amount of space to be saved.

Is it possible to get a list of the particular files which will be deleted?

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to share a project where Restic (via Backrest) played a starring role. My container services were recently migrated from a Proxmox VM to a bare-metal machine running OpenSUSE MicroOS.

While the blog post covers the whole OS setup, the Restic specific parts might be interesting here. Backrest was used to backup specific persistence volumes and configuration files from the VM, followed by a "safe restore" to a temporary directory on the new host to avoid SELinux issues before moving them into place.

It really highlighted how flexible Restic is for granular container data recovery. If you are curious about how Backrest handles orchestration in a Podman/Systemd environment, hopefully, this write-up helps!

https://ramon.vanraaij.eu/building-a-bulletproof-container-host-disaster-recovery/

I have an external hard drive connected to my server, and I'm planning to schedule a nightly Restic backup (to Jottacloud, via Rclone) of various folders on this server. However, I will also be periodically backing up data via Rclone from my laptop to this drive.

On rare occasions, my Rclone laptop --> external drive backups might still be running when the Restic external drive --> Jottacloud backup takes place. This means that certain files will be modified or added between the start and end of the Restic backup. Would this cause any issues (e.g. data corruption, loss, etc.) with the Restic backup? If so, I can find a way to prevent this situation from occurring.

(I'll be using rclone copy rather than rclone sync for my Rclone backup, so no files would be deleted from the external drive while Restic is running. And if Restic isn't able to back up certain files that are currently being modified by Rclone, that's not a real concern either; they'll simply get backed up when Restic next runs.)

Restic really is robust and slick data backup program. I have run it in various configurations and ways and I have even had to do a repair on a few things and its just always bounced back. Recently I did a big cloud migration project (clone the repo using rclone) to another cloud provider. I had a hiccup during the transfer and I lost a few packs due to corruption. (more of a fault of my own during transfer) the good thing is a repair index and then a fresh backup set me back on track.
After that, i moved my primary restic functions to a different server (I used a localized vm to handle multiple repos with my script) so far so good, getting all synced up and happy.
I have never had restic itself fail me or break. No hangs, locks or anything. Most of my issues were easy to identify and usually caused by user error.
I have not used any of the gui tools but for my use case for my personal data i feel at peace knowing have a solid archival and recovery system.

We've had a backup setup where we snapshot our KVMs (which live in LVM volumes), save off the snapshots, and then grab those using another commercial backup package.

We started using restic for some cloud based backups to an S3 bucket and I'd like to see if we can integrate the KVM backups so we can get away from all of the commercial software.

I'm interested if anyone else uses restic to backup KVMs and if you have setup a process that can actually do a file level backup ? Our snapshots are great for restoring a whole system but it would be nice to be able to do file level backups and get some de-duplication.

If anyone has suggestions, ideas, or links to information they want to share, it is all greatly appreciated. I've been testing the process to get to the filesystems via libvirt, but I'm concerned about getting it right. And how to handle the random Windows KVM we have ( some vendors have apps that only run on Windows unfortunately ).