Overview

Backrest is a web-accessible backup solution built on top of restic. Backrest provides a WebUI which wraps the restic CLI and makes it easy to create repos, browse snapshots, and restore files. Additionally, Backrest can run in the background and take an opinionated approach to scheduling snapshots and orchestrating repo health operations.

By building on restic, Backrest leverages restic's mature feature set. Restic provides fast, reliable, and secure backup operations.

Backrest itself is built in Golang (matching restic's implementation) and is shipped as a self-contained and light weight binary with no dependencies other than restic. This project aims to be the easiest way to setup and get started with backups on any system. You can expect to be able to perform all operations from the web interface but should you ever need more control, you are free to browse your repo and perform operations using the restic cli. Additionally, Backrest can safely detect and import your existing snapshots (or externally created snapshots on an ongoing basis).

Preview

Platform Support

• Docker
• Linux
• macOS
• Windows
• FreeBSD

Features

• WebUI supports local and remote access (e.g. run on a NAS and access from your desktop)
• Multi-platform support (Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, Docker)
• Import your existing restic repositories
• Cron scheduled backups and health operations (e.g. prune, check, forget)
• UI for browsing and restoring files from snapshots
• Configurable backup notifications (e.g. Discord, Slack, Shoutrrr, Gotify, Healthchecks)
• Add shell command hooks to run before and after backup operations.
• Compatible with rclone remotes
• Backup to any restic supported storage (e.g. S3, B2, Azure, GCS, local, SFTP, and all rclone remotes)

See the Backrest docs.

Backrest is packaged as a single executable. It can be run directly on Linux, macOS, and Windows. restic will be downloaded and installed on first run.

Download options

• Download and run a release from the releases page.
• Build from source (see below).
• Run with docker: garethgeorge/backrest:latest (see on dockerhub) for an image that includes rclone and common unix utilities or garethgeorge/backrest:scratch for a minimal image.

Backrest is accessible from a web browser. By default it binds to 127.0.0.1:9898 and can be accessed at http://localhost:9898. Change the port with the BACKREST_PORT environment variable e.g. BACKREST_PORT=0.0.0.0:9898 backrest to listen on all network interfaces. On first startup backrest will prompt you to create a default username and password, this can be changed later in the settings page.

Docker image: https://hub.docker.com/r/garethgeorge/backrest

Example compose file:

version: "3.2"
services:
  backrest:
    image: garethgeorge/backrest:latest
    container_name: backrest
    hostname: backrest
    volumes:
      - ./backrest/data:/data
      - ./backrest/config:/config
      - ./backrest/cache:/cache
      - /MY-BACKUP-DATA:/userdata # [optional] mount local paths to backup here.
      - /MY-REPOS:/repos # [optional] mount repos if using local storage, not necessary for remotes e.g. B2, S3, etc.
    environment:
      - BACKREST_DATA=/data # path for backrest data. restic binary and the database are placed here.
      - BACKREST_CONFIG=/config/config.json # path for the backrest config file.
      - XDG_CACHE_HOME=/cache # path for the restic cache which greatly improves performance.
      - TZ=America/Los_Angeles # set the timezone for the container, used as the timezone for cron jobs.
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 9898:9898

Download a release from the releases page

Extract the release you downloaded and run the install script:

# Extract the release to a subfolder of the current directory
mkdir backrest && tar -xzvf backrest_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz -C backrest
# Run the install script
cd backrest && ./install.sh

The install script will:

• Move the Backrest binary to /usr/local/bin
• Create a systemd service file at /etc/systemd/system/backrest.service
• Enable and start the service

Read the script before running it to make sure you are comfortable with these operations.

Move the Backrest binary to /usr/local/bin:

sudo mv backrest /usr/local/bin/backrest

Add the following line to your crontab (e.g. crontab -e):

@reboot /usr/local/bin/backrest

sudo mv backrest /usr/local/bin/backrest

Create a systemd service file at /etc/systemd/system/backrest.service with the following contents:

[Unit]
Description=ResticWeb
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=<your linux user>
Group=<your linux group>
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/backrest
Environment="BACKREST_PORT=127.0.0.1:9898"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then run the following commands to enable and start the service:

sudo systemctl enable backrest
sudo systemctl start backrest

## Install Backrest from AUR
paru -Sy backrest  # or: yay -Sy backrest

## Enable Backrest service for current user
sudo systemctl enable --now backrest@$USER.service

Backrest is provided as a homebrew tap. To install with brew run:

brew tap garethgeorge/homebrew-backrest-tap
brew install backrest
brew services start backrest

This tap uses Brew services to launch and manage Backrest's lifecycle. Backrest will launch on startup and run on port ':9898` by default.

Download a Darwin release from the releases page and install it to /usr/local/bin.

Extract the release you downloaded and run the install script:

# extract the release to a subfolder of the current directory
mkdir backrest && tar -xzvf backrest_Darwin_arm64.tar.gz -C backrest
# run the install script
cd backrest && ./install.sh

The install script will:

• Move the Backrest binary to /usr/local/bin
• Create a launch agent file at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.backrest.plist
• Load the launch agent

Read the script before running it to make sure you are comfortable with these operations.

If setting up Backrest manually, it is recommended to install the binary to /usr/local/bin and run it manually. You can also create a launch agent to run it on startup or may run it manually when needed.

Download a Windows release from the releases page and install it to C:\Program Files\Backrest\backrest.exe (create the path if it does not exist). The binary should be run as administrator on first launch, otherwise the restic installation will fail and the process will terminate.

To run the binary on login, create a shortcut to the binary and place it in the shell:startup folder. See this windows support article for more details.

Contributions are welcome! See the issues or feel free to open a new issue to discuss a project. Beyond the core codebase, contributions to documentation, cookbooks, and testing are always welcome.

• Node.js for UI development
• Go 1.21 or greater for server development
• goreleaser go install github.com/goreleaser/goreleaser@latest

(Optional) To Edit Protobuffers

apt install -y protobuf-compiler
go install google.golang.org/grpc/cmd/protoc-gen-go-grpc@latest
go install github.com/bufbuild/buf/cmd/buf@v1.27.2
go install github.com/fullstorydev/grpcurl/cmd/grpcurl@latest
go install google.golang.org/protobuf/cmd/protoc-gen-go@latest
go install connectrpc.com/connect/cmd/protoc-gen-connect-go@latest
npm install -g @bufbuild/protoc-gen-es @connectrpc/protoc-gen-connect-es

(cd webui && npm i && npm run build)
(cd cmd/backrest && go build .)

You can also use VSCode with Dev Containers extension to quickly get up and running with a working development and debugging environment.

0. Make sure Docker and VSCode with Dev Containers extension is installed
1. Clone this repository
2. Open this folder in VSCode
3. When prompted, click on Open in Container button, or run > Dev Containers: Rebuild and Reopen in Containers command
4. When container is started, go to Run and Debug, choose Debug Backrest (backend+frontend) and run it