restic-PyBM

A Python 3 wrapper to manage restic repositories and monitor them with Nagios-compliant outputs.

• restic-PyBM
  • Why?
  • Assumptions
  • Features
  • Roadmap
  • Usage
    • Configuration file
    • The script itself

Why?

When looking for a tool to backup my homelab and personal documents, restic came out as the strongest contender for FOSS solutions.

Implementation proved to be easy and simple.

restic-PyBM started out as a Bash script to automate stuff. Then the need to monitor the backups appeared, then the script started to look horrendous, then I wanted to prepare for integration with one-time repository keys generated via HashiCorp Vault.

So I decided to rewrite things in a somewhat cleaner manner in Python, with a YAML configuration file.

Assumptions

In its current form, this wrapper makes a series of assumptions over the use of restic:

• You have already deployed restic on the nodes where you plan to use this script. I don't handle all the find-the-release-in-github-and-extract-it stuff. If you have reached the point where you want to automate stuff, you've probably already automated that, anyway.
• A given repository is used by a single host, e.g. two servers have two distinct repositories for their own backups.
• There is no fine-grained snapshots age policy: there is an absolute minimum and maximal age, and all snapshots over the latter limit are deleted. You are responsible of managing the snapshots frequency through the way this script is called.
• All your hosts run on the same timezone. This is especially important if you create snapshots from a given node and monitor them from another one.
• Currently ages can only be expressed in days.
• As tags are currently not supported, if you want to distinguish different types of snapshots that have different preservation policies, you need distinct repositories. This is likely to be the first assumption to disappear in the future.

Over time, depending on my needs and eventual feature requests if this project drags any attention, some of these assumptions might get lifted.

Features

• Should transparently support all repository locations supported by restic.
• Already tested with local and REST server repos. Feedback on other types welcome!
• Repos initialisation
• Execution of backups
• Old snapshots cleanup based on an age policy
• Repository health & age checks with Nagios-compliant outputs

Roadmap

• Batch execution of a command on all repos
• Repositories deduplication
• Integration with HashiCorp Vault
• Option to auto-update restic upon invocation
• Repository passwords management (add and delete)
• Support for optional excludes.
• Support for snapshot tags.
• Refactor to remove code deduplication.
• Support ages expressed in more complex fashions.

Usage

Configuration file

The script uses a YAML configuration file:

restic_binary_location: /opt/restic
repos:
  repo1:
    location: /root/test
    key: aaaa
    min_age: 1
    max_age: 7
    includes:
      - /tmp
  repo2:
    location: rest:https://rest-server.local:8000/server_babel
    key: bbb
    min_age: 3
    max_age: 15
    includes:
      - /etc
      - /usr/local/lib

• restic_binary_location points to the location of the actual restic binary. The script does not handle the deployment of restic itself.
• Inside the repos object, each repository is identified by a label and contains four fields:
  • location: A restic-compliant repository address
  • key: A password for this repo.
  • min-age: The maximum age of the newest snapshot in the repository. Used for check.
  • max-age: The maximum age of the oldest snapshot in the repository. Used for check and prune.
  • includes: A list of folder and/or files to backup in the snapshots.

The script itself

usage: restic-PyBM.py [-h] [-c CONFIGFILE] [--full] [--perfdata] [-v] [-q]
                      {run,create,list,prune,check} repo

A restic wrapper and Nagios-compliant status checker using a YAML
configuration file. Version 0.1.

positional arguments:
  {run,create,list,prune,check}
                        Action to execute.
  repo                  Repository name, as declared in the configuration
                        file.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -c CONFIGFILE, --config-file CONFIGFILE
                        Configuration file location. Default [backup.yml]
  --full                check action: Verifies the actual snapshots content on
                        top of repository metadata.
  --perfdata            check action: Outputs Nagios-compliant perfdata
                        metrics
  -v, --verbose         Provide restic output even for successful execution of
                        actions.
  -q, --quiet           Output only error messages.