sobarch

Backing Up /home

Snapshots protect the system, not your files. A backup on a separate drive is what survives a dead disk or an accidental delete.

Sobarch's snapshots cover the root filesystem only, and they live on the same disk as your data. /home has no snapshots and no backup unless you set one up. This page uses restic, which stores encrypted, deduplicated backups, so each run after the first copies only what changed.

sudo pacman -S restic

Set up a repository

Plug in the drive; it mounts under /run/media/$USER/<label>. Create a repository on it and choose a password:

export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/run/media/$USER/BACKUP/restic
restic init

Keep the password somewhere safe, outside this machine. The backup is encrypted with it and cannot be recovered without it.

Back up

restic backup ~ --exclude-caches --exclude ~/.cache

Run it whenever you like. Later runs only upload changes and take seconds when little has changed. To avoid typing the password each time, put it in a file readable only by you and set RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE=~/.config/restic-password.

Look inside and restore

restic snapshots                                  # list backups
restic ls latest | less                           # files in the newest one
restic restore latest --target ~/restored --include /home/you/Documents

Restore into a new folder like ~/restored and copy back what you need, rather than restoring over your live files.

Keep it tidy

Drop old snapshots and reclaim space, keeping a week of dailies, a month of weeklies, and half a year of monthlies:

restic forget --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --keep-monthly 6 --prune
restic check

restic check verifies the repository; run it now and then.

Notes

  • A backup only on a drive that stays plugged in next to the computer doesn't protect against theft or fire. Keep a second copy elsewhere if the data matters. restic can also write straight to cloud storage; see its documentation.
  • There is no automatic schedule. You can run the backup command from a systemd user timer if you want one.
  • borg does the same job and is a fine alternative if you already use it.

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