Backups done right! on restic

Restic 0.18.1 Released

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 20:36:00 +0200

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.18.1!

This is a bug fix release. Most notably, it resolves a crash when using backup --stdin-filename with directory paths and another crash that could occur when directories are removed during backup operations. Support for local repositories stored on a filesystem that does not support chmod (such as CIFS or WebDAV mounted via FUSE) has been restored.

To download the new release and to see a more detailed list of important changes, please head over to GitHub. If you already have restic (0.9.4 or later), you can use the self-update command to automatically download and verify the new release.

REST-server 0.14.0 released

Sat, 31 May 2025 22:35:00 +0200

We have just released REST-server 0.14.0.

This release corrects permissions of the .htpasswd file created by the Docker container when one does not already exist. The permissions of existing .htpasswd files, which were previously created world-readable, must be manually changed if relevant in your setup.

In addition, REST-server adds support for proxy-based authentication and uses hardened TLS settings. Due to dependency updates, REST-server now requires Go 1.23 to build.

Please see the changelog for more specific information!

Restic 0.18.0 Released

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 20:41:00 +0100

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.18.0!

This release brings a large number of improvements, many of which have been contributed by our community. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this release, whether through providing input, testing, contributing code changes, or helping with support in the forum!

The most important changes are:

Mitigation for a potential attack on the content-defined chunking algorithm used by restic. The attack does not let an attacker decrypt data, but could in very specific circumstances allow an attacker to determine whether a large file, fully known to the attacker, is present in the repository. We consider the chance of a practical attack to be very low, but nonetheless implement protection against it. See this post for details on the attack and mitigation.
On Windows and macOS, restic now requires at least Windows 10, Windows Server 2016 or macOS 11 Big Sur. In addition, restic no longer supports TLS versions before TLS 1.2. This is due to dependencies needing Go 1.23 which is now used to build restic.
JSON support for the check and tag commands. Exit codes are now also included in JSON output. See the JSON output documentation for more information.

Other notable changes include:

Restic 0.17.3 Released

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.17.3!

This patch release fixes a couple of bugs on Windows related to backing up metadata on removable disks and extended attributes with VSS. It also fixes handling of broken SFTP connections, enables --no-lock for prune --dry-run and works around a problem when browsing FUSE-T mounted repositories.

Restic 0.17.2 Released

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 16:55:00 +0100

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.17.2!

This patch release is mainly to fix a problem on Windows where files with the type irregular could mistakenly be included in snapshots, causing error messages. Once having upgraded to restic 0.17.2, this can be fixed for existing snapshots by running restic repair snapshots --forget.

Restic 0.17.1 Released

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 21:40:00 +0200

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.17.1!

This release contains various bug fixes and small enhancements. The most important ones are the following:

The backup command now also stores files and directories for which some metadata could not be retrieved.
On Windows several backup errors have been fixed. In particular volumes and network shares that do not support extended attributes can be backed up again.
The JSON output of the backup and restore command now properly include the error message.

Restic 0.17.0 Released

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 15:08:00 +0200

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.17.0!

After almost a year of hard work, this release brings a lot of improvements, of which the main highlights are:

Highly improved restore command, now supporting dry-run, in-place restore with different overwrite modes and a delete option.
Resumable and optimized prune command, now using up to 60% less memory and being less write-intensive.
Ability to skip snapshot creation if nothing changed.
Support for repositories with empty password.
Support for FUSE-T on macOS.
Support for size and summary statistics in snapshots.

Other notable mentions are:

REST-server 0.13.0 released

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 11:30:00 +0200

We have just released REST-server 0.13.0.

This release of REST-server supports listening on unix sockets and also handles signals better than previous releases. Due to dependency updates REST-server now requires Go 1.18 to build.

Please see the changelog for more specific information!

Please let us know what you think in the forum post linked below!

Restic 0.16.5 Released

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 21:00:00 +0200

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.16.5!

This release updates a few potentially vulnerable dependencies.

As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! To get help or provide feedback, please write a post in the forum.

Restic 0.16.4 Released

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

A new patch release of restic 0.16 has now been released, restic 0.16.4!

This release works around and improves detection of a bug in the compression library used by restic. The resulting issue only happens when using restic 0.16.3 and the max compression level (the default auto and off compression levels are not affected), and when the source files being backed up have specific data in them to trigger the bug.

Restic 0.16.3 Released

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.16.3!

This release fixes a couple of bugs on Windows and in the restore command. It also works around an unlikely yet possible situation with rclone which could potentially result in data loss. Please upgrade to this new restic version to make sure you are not affected.

Restic 0.16.2 Released

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.16.2!

This release restores support for ARMv5 which was accidentally not included in the previous one, and also fixes missing documentation on Read the Docs.

Restic 0.16.1 Released

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.16.1!

This release contains a few usage and cosmetic improvements, but also one bugfix for a very unlikely but still possible data corruption issue when using the max compression level. Please read the changelog for more details and information on how to verify your repository if you used max compression. Please also note that the auto compression level (which is the default) was never affected.

Restic 0.16.0 Released

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 20:42:23 +0200

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.16.0!

This version of restic brings up to 25% less memory usage and a lot of usability improvements, including <snapshot>:<subfolder> syntax for the diff, ls and restore commands, as well as a progress bar and JSON support for the restore command. Please see the documentation of each command for details.

Restic now also includes a repair snapshots command, which can be used to salvage certain types of damaged repositories. For consistency, the rebuild-index command has been renamed to repair index.

REST-server 0.12.1 released

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 18:00:00 +0200

We have just released rest-server 0.12.1.

This release includes a bugfix for fsync related warnings and allows logging to stdout using the --log - option. Please see the changelog for more specific information!

Please let us know what you think in the forum post linked below!

REST-server 0.12.0 released

Mon, 24 Apr 2023 13:00:00 +0200

We have just released rest-server 0.12.0.

This release includes performance optimizations, allowing additional characters in usernames, ability to specify .htpasswd file location, as well as some macOS specific fixes and other general compatibility fixes. Please see the changelog for more specific information!

Please let us know what you think in the forum post linked below!

Restic 0.15.2 released

Mon, 24 Apr 2023 12:00:00 +0200

We’re very pleased to announce restic 0.15.2!

This release is primarily intended to address some minor bugs and cosmetic issues, but worth mentioning is that it is now possible to use the ap-southeast-4 region (Melbourne) with S3. Also, official restic builds for the riscv64 architecture on Linux are now available.

Restic 0.15.1 Released

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

We’re very pleased to announce restic 0.15.1! This is just a small bugfix release, fixing some issues and cosmetic inconveniences.

As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! To get help or provide feedback, please write a post in the forum.

Restic 0.15.0 Released

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 21:14:23 +0100

We are happy to announce the release of restic 0.15.0!

In this version, a new rewrite command has been implemented. This allows for removing unwanted data from existing snapshots, for example if you discover that some files were unintentionally backed up, such as files with sensitive content or files that take up a lot of space and don’t need to be backed up. Please see the corresponding documentation for more information and usage examples.

Restic 0.14.0 Released

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 20:16:02 +0200

We today happily announce the release of restic 0.14.0! \o/

This release contains a highly anticipated feature in restic - compression! To start using it, either initialize a new repository (which defaults to repository version 2 and therefore supports compression) or upgrade your current repository. The compression level can be changed from the default auto (fast and efficient) to max or off using the --compression option (or the corresponding environment variable). Please note that the new/upgraded repository can only be accessed by restic version 0.14 or higher.

Restic 0.13.1 Released

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 11:16:23 +0200

We’re proud to announce that restic 0.13.1 has been released today!

This release contains two smaller bug fixes which came up after the last release. For downloading the new release and to see a more detailed list of important changes, please head over to GitHub. If you already have restic (0.9.4 or later), you can use the self-update command to automatically download and verify the new release.

As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

Restic 0.13.0 Released

Sat, 26 Mar 2022 19:47:44 +0100

We’re proud to announce that restic 0.13.0 has been released today!

This release contains several bug fixes and improvements worth mentioning:

It is now possible to add negative patterns to cancel previous exclusions (e.g. --exclude '/home/user/*' --exclude '!/home/user/.config').
The backup command now has a --dry-run switch which (together with --verbose) prints the files that would be included in a backup.
We have added checksums for various backends so data uploaded to a backend can be checked there.
The restore command was optimized and is now twice as fast, the copy command was improved as well.

For downloading the new release and to see a more detailed list of important changes, please head over to GitHub. If you already have restic (0.9.4 or later), you can use the self-update command to automatically download and verify the new release.

Rest Server 0.11.0 released

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 20:23:36 +0100

We have just released rest-server 0.11.0. It includes a fix for an issue where during transfer, a file could have been corrupted. The details are described in PR #142. The full changelog is included in the release.

Please let us know what you think in the forum post linked below!

Restic 0.12.1 released

Tue, 03 Aug 2021 12:04:36 +0200

We’re proud to announce that restic 0.12.1 has been released today! This release contains several small fixes for bugs and a few smaller enhancements.

As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum. If you have the time, please let us know if the CHANGELOG.md file (also included in the release on GitHub) is helpful for you. We try hard to make it readable for users, so you do not have to follow the development in detail. Is it worth the effort? What do you think? Please answer in the forum below.

Restic 0.12.0 released

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 11:02:36 +0100

We’re proud to announce that restic 0.12.0 has been released today! This release packs many speed improvements in several restic commands. For example, we expect that the garbage collection process (restic prune) will be an order of magnitude faster for almost all users. In addition, you can now configure how much data should be optimized (via --max-repack-size) and how much unused data is allowed to remain in the repo (via --max-unused). These flags gives you more control over how long restic prune will take overall, and also allow you to have several shorter runs of restic prune instead of a single long one. A special thanks goes out to Alexander Weiss for these indeed awesome improvements in particular, but also to all the other contributors who work on restic!

Restic 0.11.0 released

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 10:00:51 +0100

Restic 0.11.0 was released today! For downloading the new release and to see a more detailed list of important changes, please head over to GitHub. If you already have restic (0.9.4 or later), you can use the self-update command to automatically download and verify the new release.

This new release contains a highly anticipated feature on Windows: being able to automatically create a Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) using restic backup --use-fs-snapshot. We thought that this feature warrants a new release, just a few weeks after restic 0.10.0 was released. The code was contributed by user fgma, thank you very much!

restic 0.10.0 released

Sat, 19 Sep 2020 17:44:59 +0200

After ten months of work we’ve just released restic 0.10.0! For downloading the new release and to see a more detailed list of important changes, please head over to GitHub. If you already have restic (0.9.4 or later), you can use the self-update command to automatically download and verify the new release.

This release contains a lot of improvements, both smaller and bigger ones, and the restic project wishes to send a big thank you to everyone who contributed to make this happen. Every contribution, be it a small documentation change or deeply technical code changes and optimizations, are always welcome. An extra huge thanks goes out to MichaelEischer for tying it all together with countless hours of tireless reviewing and carefully considered decisions as part of this delicate process.

Rest Server 0.10.0 Released

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 11:47:00 +0200

We have just released rest-server 0.10.0 which includes a few potentially breaking changes. For details, please see the changes described in the release.

This release corrects a security issue. User wojas discovered that it was possible to access repositories belonging to other users. It was not possible to access directories outside of the path the repositories were stored in.

The rest-server has an option to allow users (identify by HTTP Basic authentication) to only access their own repository by specifying the --private-repos option. For example, the user foo can then only access the repository at https://localhost:8000/foo, but not the repo of the user bar at http://localhost:8000/bar.

restic 0.9.6 released

Fri, 22 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.9.6. For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. If you already have restic (0.9.4 or later), you can use the self-update command to automatically download and verify the new release.

As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

restic 0.9.5 released

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.9.5. For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. If you already have restic 0.9.4, you can use the self-update command to automatically download and verify the new release.

As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

restic 0.9.4 released

Sun, 06 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.9.4. Besides several fixes for bugs it contains a new restorer implementation which downloads data concurrently, so it is much faster than the old one.

For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. If you already have restic 0.9.3, you can use the self-update command to automatically download and verify the new release. Due to a bug you need to specify where restic should write the new file, e.g. like this:

New Year, New Infrastructure!

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We wish you a happy new year 2019!

Our friends at hosting.de recently provided us with a dedicated server to host this website, the forum, and the beta builder for restic, and we’ve just moved everything over. Thank you very much for your support!

Please leave a comment in the forum in the thread for this announcement if there’s anything broken for you.

restic 0.9.3 released

Sat, 13 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.9.3. It is mostly a maintenance release, but several smaller enhancements have been added.

For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

Configuring GitHub Issue Templates

Sun, 09 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Like many other Open Source projects, restic uses GitHub for hosting the source code and managing issues. Over time, we discovered that oftentimes users open an issue on GitHub which just consists of a question, for example on how to use restic in a certain situation. While such issues can be answered quickly, sometimes there’s no consent on when the issue can be seen as resolved and therefore closed (the issue is not actionable). The GitHub issue tracker is then cluttered with issues for which there is no clear next action and no clear “resolved” state. This blog post describes how we set up the issue templates on GitHub to resolve this situation nicely.

Enabling the Go Build Cache on Travis/AppVeyor

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The restic project runs the unit and integration tests for each pushed commit and each pull request. We’re using Travis CI for Linux and OS X, and AppVeyor for Windows. We’re very grateful that they provide their services free of charge for Open Source projects!

Our project not only runs the tests on Travis, but also compiles restic for each supported architecture, operating system, and version of Go. Go is known for its fast compilation times, but still, compilation takes its time. Roughly, for each version of Go, running all the tests takes between 13 and 25 minutes:

restic 0.9.2 released

Mon, 06 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.9.2. Among several fixes it includes support for “Application Keys” for BackBlaze B2, which can be restricted to a specific bucket and/or path (so you don’t have to give restic access to all your files stored at B2).

For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

restic 0.9.1 released

Sun, 10 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.9.1, a minor bugfix release.

For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

restic 0.9.0 released

Mon, 21 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.9.0. This is the next bigger release since 0.8.0, it mainly brings a completely rewritten archiver core, improves the speed for restic check, and many bug fixes.

For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

The restic project turns four!

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Four years ago on 2014-04-06 fd0 added the first commit to what would later become the restic repository. At the time it was code-named khepri, but unfortunately the name wasn’t available on GitHub any more, so we had to find a different one.

At the moment, restic’s repository was starred on GitHub almost four thousand times. And we’ve collected 56 other backup tools along the way, helping countless people to discover backup programs (not necessarily restic alone). These two facts alone prove that it was worth it: More people were able to setup easy, effortless backups which they can depend upon.

Using rclone as a restic Backend

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Originally, restic started with just two backends: local and sftp. Over time, many new backends were added so that restic is now able to store a repository on a variety of different cloud-based services. However, it became clear that each new backend we add for a new cloud service works slightly different and requires almost constant maintenance.

A while ago, Alex was contacted by Nick, who found restic by listening to the episode #48 of the GoTime podcast. He’s the primary author of rclone, a program which is “rsync for cloud storage”. At the moment, it supports almost 20 different backends/services! They quickly agreed that it would be awesome if restic could just use rclone as a backend, thereby supporting all the backends that rclone can talk to!

restic 0.8.3 released

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.8.3. This is again a bugfix release, but also several improvements for cloud-based backends.

For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

restic 0.8.2 released

Sat, 17 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.8.2. This is mostly a bugfix release, with some smaller enhancements.

For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

moving to restic.net

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A while back we’ve registered the domain restic.net and we’re moving the website from GitHub Pages to a dedicated hosting machine at https://restic.net. Please update any links to the old website, thanks!

~~If you’re subscribed to the RSS/Atom XML feed, you need to update the feed url to https://restic.net/feed.xml.~~

Update: When we migrated the website to Hugo in 2020, the feed changed from Atom at the above mentioned URL to RSS 2.0 at individual section URLs, e.g. https://restic.net/blog/index.xml for the blog posts. Please update or verify the feed configuration in your reader so you don’t miss out on any new posts! :)

restic 0.8.1 released

Wed, 27 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.8.1. Among others, support for DigitalOcean Spaces (and other backends which use HTTP) is improved.

For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

restic 0.8.0 released

Sun, 26 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.8.0. It brings the new awesome metadata cache which will speed up many operations, you may need to run restic prune once to fully see it in action.

For downloading the new release and see a more detailed list of important changes, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter! Or just write a post in the forum.

This release also corrects a (low risk) vulnerability. When attackers are able to create files with arbitrary names on a Linux/Unix system in a directory that is saved with restic, it may happen that when the directory is restored on a Windows system to write files outside the target directory for the restore.

Upcoming changes for the S3 backend

Sat, 25 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR: If you’re using the s3 backend and cannot access your repo any more, append the path /restic to the repository location.

We’ve just merged Pull Request #1437 which resolves an issue with the S3 backend reported in #1292. When the next restic version is released (or you’re using the master branch directly), this may require modifying the repository location you’re passing to restic.

In order to access a repository stored on S3, restic requires the following information:

restic 0.7.3 released

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.7.3 to correct a bug with the Google Cloud Storage and Azure backends. When restic prune or restic rebuild-index was run, not all files stored in these backends were considered.

For downloading the code, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

The binaries released with each restic version are reproducible, which means that you can easily reproduce a byte identical version from the source code for that release. Instructions on how to do that are contained in the builder repository.

restic 0.7.2 released

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’re very pleased to announce that restic 0.7.2 has been released! For downloading the code, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

Important Changes in 0.7.2

We’ve added an official docker image and a Dockerfile to build this image in docker/. #1061

Meeting at FrOSCon 2017 - Details

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

As announced a few weeks ago we’re meeting at this year’s FrOSCon on 19 August 2017, 15:00 CEST in Sankt Augustin near Bonn/Cologne in Germany (free entry)! We’ll get a project room for the afternoon, the room number will be announced as an update to this blog entry, on Fosstodon and in the forum.

It’d be nice to know how many of you will be able to join us, so please leave a comment in the GitHub issue #1110 or in the forum. We’re looking forward to meeting you all, thanks!

Discourse Forum

Fri, 11 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve noticed that there are many questions raised as issues on GitHub, so we’ve installed a Discourse forum at https://forum.restic.net! For now, this is an experiment to see if a forum is better suited to answer questions. We’ll see how that goes.

Please let us know any feedback you have (in the forum, obviously)!

Please upgrade to restic 0.7.1!

Tue, 25 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR:

Under some circumstances, data in the repo was not stored properly
This could have caused incomplete backups
Upgrade restic to at least 0.7.1 and run restic rebuild-index before the next backup
It is good practice to run restic check regularly

Background

We always knew that at some point there may be a more serious bug in restic that warrants a broader announcement. This is the story of how a small improvement that makes the code even more conservative lead to a small error which then caused a couple of unintended consequences. In the end, under some specific circumstances restic wrote incomplete snapshots to the repository.

restic 0.7.1 released

Sat, 22 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’re proud to present restic 0.7.1! For downloading the code, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

The binaries released with each restic version starting are reproducible, which means that you can easily reproduce a byte identical version from the source code for that release. Instructions on how to do that are contained in the builder repository.

Important Changes in 0.7.1

The migrate command for changing the s3legacy layout to the default layout for s3 backends has been improved: It can now be restarted with restic migrate --force s3_layout and automatically retries operations on error. #1073 #1075

Small changes

The local and sftp backends now create the subdirs below data/ on open/init. This way, restic makes sure that they always exist. This is connected to an issue for the sftp server: #11 #1055 #1077 #1105

Meeting at FrOSCon 2017

Fri, 21 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’re planning to have a restic meeting at this year’s FrOSCon, which takes place on 19 and 20 August 2017 in Sankt Augustin near Bonn/Cologne in Germany. The entry is free! In order to organize this, please add a “+1” reaction to the GitHub issue #1110. We’re looking forward to meeting you!

restic 0.7.0 released

Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.7.0! For downloading the code, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

Important Changes in 0.7.0

New “swift” backend: A new backend for the OpenStack Swift cloud storage protocol has been added, https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Swift https://github.com/restic/restic/pull/975 https://github.com/restic/restic/pull/648
New “b2” backend: A new backend for Backblaze B2 cloud storage service has been added, https://www.backblaze.com https://github.com/restic/restic/issues/512 https://github.com/restic/restic/pull/978
Improved performance for the find command: Restic recognizes paths it has already checked for the files in question, so the number of backend requests is reduced a lot. https://github.com/restic/restic/issues/989 https://github.com/restic/restic/pull/993

restic on GoTime #48

Thu, 01 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Last week Alex had the honour to join Ashley, Erik, and Brian at GoTime. GoTime is a podcast about Go, the community, and everything in between. It was a lot of fun (and he got to do the intro in German). The episode can be found on the website, you can also listen to it right here:

Go Time 48: Restic and Backups (Done Right) with Alexander Neumann – Listen on Changelog.com

restic 0.6.0 released

Mon, 29 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.6.0!

No grave bugs have been found, so the final version is identical to the -rc.1 version. This release contains many bug fixes and several improvements for the user interface, the most important changes are listed below (and also contained in the CHANGELOG.md.

For downloading the code, head over to https://github.com/restic/restic/releases/tag/v0.6.0. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

Important Changes in 0.6.0

Consistent forget policy

The forget command was corrected to be more consistent in which snapshots are to be forgotten. It is possible that the new code removes more snapshots than before, so please review what would be deleted by using the --dry-run option. https://github.com/restic/restic/pull/957 https://github.com/restic/restic/issues/953

restic 0.6.1 released

Mon, 29 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.6.1!

Just a few days after the release of restic 0.6.0 we’ve released 0.6.1 as a bugfix release to address two annoying bugs. The changes are listed below.

This is the first release of restic that uses the new build Docker container which allows you to reproduce a byte identical version of the released binaries. This is called Reproducible Builds.

For downloading the code, head over to GitHub. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

restic 0.6.0-rc.1 released

Thu, 25 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.6.0-rc.1!

This is the Release Candidate version. If no grave bugs occur, it will be released as the final version in a few days. This release contains many bug fixes and several improvements for the user interface, the most important changes are listed below (and also contained in the CHANGELOG.md.

For downloading the code, head over to https://github.com/restic/restic/releases/tag/v0.6.0-rc.1 As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

Important Changes in 0.6.0

Consistent forget policy

restic 0.5.0 released

Sat, 11 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.5.0.

This release contains (among many bug fixes) several improvements to the user interface:

more progress bars
consistent filtering for tags, hostname, or path
a new command tag which allows modifying tags of existing snapshots

Since we’ve internally started using the new context package, Go 1.7 is now required for compiling restic. Running build.go will check this for you. The released binaries have been compiled with Go 1.8.

restic 0.4.0 released

Thu, 02 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve just released restic 0.4.0. This release will use much less memory during certain operations (notably prune, but also during backup). There have also been some major internal changes which will hopefully contribute to an even larger improvement in memory usage.

As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

The Go Devroom at FOSDEM 2017

Thu, 02 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

For the third time at this year’s FOSDEM (which stands for “Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting” according to Wikipedia) features a room on Sunday (5 February 2017) dedicated to Go development: The Go Devroom. fd0 will be available for a chat about restic and Go development the whole day!

restic 0.3.3 released, Debian package

Sun, 08 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve released another minor version: restic 0.3.3. As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

Recently, several people worked together to create and upload an official Debian package for restic. A few days ago on 2 January 2017, that package entered the testing distribution, so restic will be part of the next Debian stable release!

restic 0.3.2 released

Sun, 18 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago we’ve released restic 0.3.1, unfortunately that introduced a bug which let’s restic panic when there is an error during backup. The details are described in GitHub issues #699 and #700.

So, here it is: restic version 0.3.2.

As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

restic 0.3.1 released

Tue, 13 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

We’re proud to announce the release of restic version 0.3.1. This is mainly a small bugfix release, no major new features have been added.

The detailed change log can be found in the release notes or on GitHub.

As always, thanks for reporting any issues you encounter!

restic 0.3.0 released

Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

After two months development we’re proud to release restic version 0.3.0.

The most notable change is the addition of the prune and forget commands (we’ve covered them in an earlier blog post) which allow removing backups from the repository according to configurable criteria. Since this was one of the most requested features, now that it is implemented there’s really no excuse for not making backups any more!

The detailed change log can be found in the release notes or on GitHub.

Removing Snapshots

Mon, 22 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The feature that was most often requested feature for restic is the ability to remove snapshots from the repository. Sometimes, restic was even (rightfully) criticised for not having such a function.

After about three months of work, PR #518 was merged into the master branch a few days ago. This pull request brings two new commands to restic: forget and prune, which allows you to not only remove a single snapshot manually, but rather specify a policy according to which restic should automatically remove snapshots (so you don’t have to bother with them). The remainder of this post will give a short introduction on how you can use the new commands to implement your own strategy for limiting growth of the restic repository.

restic 0.2.0 released

Fri, 05 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A few days ago we’ve released restic 0.2.0, the detailed change log and released files can be found over at GitHub: https://github.com/restic/restic/releases/tag/v0.2.0.

This release includes around 550 commits since version 0.1.0 (August 2015).

Documentation and Manual

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Documentation in software projects is one of the things most developers hate. It is no secret that the docs always seem to be out of date.

In order to improve this situation for restic, since a few days ago the manual and documentation is part of the main restic repository. Having the documentation in the main repository means that all users have instant access to the exact version of the documentation they’ll need and developers can document new features in the same Pull Request they’re submitting the code.

OpenChaos at CCC Cologne: restic - Backups mal richtig

Thu, 04 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

On Friday, 30 January fd0 gave a talk at the Chaos Computer Club Cologne (C4) e.V. in Cologne, Germany in their monthly series of public lectures called OpenChaos. Unfortunately for our international readers the talk was given in German.

The recording is embedded below. If you’ve watched the talk and have a question or other feedback, please contact fd0, he’d love to hear your feedback!

Verifying Code Archive Integrity

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The restic project and all the source code, even this website is hosted by GitHub, and they provide an awesome service! This post describes how we sign releases of restic by using GnuPG so you can independently verify the integrity of the source code. In addition it is show how the automatically generated tar.gz files can be recreated with from the git repository.

Signing Git Tags

In a git repository, “tags” can be created which basically are just named pointers to a commit, optionally annotated with other data. You can read about tags in detail here. Creating a signed tag is really easy: just call git tag with --annotate and --sign, e.g. to sign the current commit as version 0.1.0 run:

Foundation - Introducing Content Defined Chunking (CDC)

Sat, 12 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post will explain Content Defined Chunking (CDC) and how it is used by restic.

Backup programs need to deal with large volumes of changing data. Saving the whole copy of each file again to the backup location when a subsequent (usually called “incremental”) backup is created is not efficient. Over time, different strategies have emerged to handle data in such a case.

In a backup program, data de-duplication can be applied in two locations: Removing duplicate data from the same or different files within the same backup process (inter-file de-duplication), e.g. during the initial backup, or removing it between several backups that contain some of the same data (inter-backup de-duplication). While the former is desirable to have, the latter is much more important.

FrOSCon 2015 Lecture: A Solution to the Backup Inconvenience

Sat, 12 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

For the tenth time, FrOSCon took place at the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in Sankt Augustin near Bonn/Cologne on 22nd and 23rd of August. We took the chance and submitted a talk about restic titled “A Solution to the Backup Inconvenience”, which was accepted.

You can watch the recording and view the slides. If you do so, please ~~leave feedback~~¹

The recording is embedded below:

[1] The feedback link is non-functional (2020-10-06)

Introduction to the restic Blog - Welcome!

Sat, 12 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re reading this, you’ve found your way to the restic development blog, awesome! Let me welcome you on behalf of the whole development team.

In this blog we’ll publish articles that explain the foundation techniques that restic is built upon and will give some insights into what’s happening on the development side of restic. Once restic is widely in use, we’ll probably shift the focus a bit towards the user perspective of backups and present tips and tricks for using restic more efficiently.