Backing up a home server with restic

I kept postponing proper backups until a disk in my home server died. Now everything is copied every night with restic — here is the minimal setup that works.

First create a repository. Save its password in a password manager right away: without it there is no way to restore.

restic -r /mnt/backup/restic init

Then the backup itself. --exclude-caches skips directories tagged as caches, which saves a surprising amount of space.

restic -r /mnt/backup/restic backup /home /etc --exclude-caches

Pruning old snapshots

restic -r /mnt/backup/restic forget --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --keep-monthly 6 --prune

Most importantly, test a restore every few months. A backup you've never restored guarantees very little.