Backups and howto

This Yunohost server is backed up onto two separate USB drives, both of which are on-premises. Several attempts have been made to perform an off-premises backup using both Borg and Restic, but I have found them to be more difficult than they’re worth, as well as expensive, so I am doing backups on-site only using the built-in Yunohost backup and recovery service and Restic, both to their own separate USB drives.

Drive 1 (Drive label: YNHRECOVERY)

This backup uses the built-in Yunohost backup and recovery service. A simple cron job is used, detailing the time and what is to be backed up.

FULL BACKUP

• Time: Midnight every Wednesday and Sunday
  
• What: EVERYTHING. (accept multimedia items like videos, photos, and music) This is a full backup. Everything is checked off in the Yunohost backup service. There is a .nobackup file in the folder /home/yunohost.multimedia. This blank file prevents this folder from being backed up.
  

OTHER ITEMS THAT ARE BACKED UP INCLUDE:

• Time: 4 AM EVERY day.
  
• What: User emails.
  
• Time: 5 AM EVERY day.
  
• What: User home folders

Drive 2 (Drive label: DATARECOVERY)

Restic is a backup service that can be installed from the CLI or through the Yunohost application catalogue. On this server, it has been installed using the CLI.

The backup used to be a cron job, but recently the excellent Restic GUI, Backrest, has been installed and is now in use. Using this app, you can create Restic repos, view and download the contents of a repo, set the times of the backup, and set retention.

ALL items in the folder - /home/yunohost.multimedia are backed up to drive 2 DATARECOVERY

• Time: 3 AM every Saturday
  
• What: The /home/yunohost.multimedia folder.
• Time: 11 PM every day
  
• What: Piwigo Photo Uploads folder
• Time: Every hour, every day
  
• What: All users' Nextcloud data folders

Current Healthchecks status:

Below I have kept some useful Restic commands, just in case...! Well, you never know...

Where is the Restic app located? Type: which restic will show you where the app is located on your drive.

Where is my Restic repository located? The Restic repository is located at media/datarecovery/restic. This is a symbolic link from the Restic directory on the main drive. The physical drive is a USB spinner labelled “datarecovery”. 

What is the latest installed Restic version?
Type: restic version. This will tell you the current version, which right now is 0.19.1 (Note: The Restic version is not the same version that appears in Backrest, as shown in the top left corner of the app, which at the time of writing is v1.14.1)

You can use these commands within the Backrest app; just remove the word ‘restic’ from the command. The commands below are for if you are using the terminal.

Can I update Restic? Type: restic self-update. If there is an update available, it will be downloaded and installed.

Has the backup happened? Type: restic check -r /media/datarecovery/restic

How do I change the backup schedule? Type: crontab -u root -e Nano will open, and you can edit the time and contents of your backup. This cron job now runs the Yunohost backup to drive 1 'YNHRECOVERY' only.

Can I see the snapshots? Type: restic -r /media/datarecovery/restic snapshots

Can I see the contents of the snapshots? Type: restic ls (snapshotID here) --repo /media/datarecovery/restic

Can I mount the snapshot? Type: restic -r /media/datarecovery/restic mount /mnt/restic

NOTE: For most of the above commands, you will require the Restic password that you set up when you created your repository, etc.