Restic snapshot confusion

Getting Help
1

Assuming I have few different directories, not all of which I want to backup regularly, I would execute something like

restic -r repo backup /home/a
restic -r repo backup /home/b

Now I have different snapshots (in reality, there would be quite a few more directories), each of which contains different files. How do you manage this? It seems like after a while it would be incredibly difficult to find specific files. Is it not possible to have all directories within one snapshot?

I know about excluding documents and doing

restic -r repo backup /home/

would be possible, but I would like to avoid this.

2 
restic -r repo backup /home/a /home/b
3

Thanks, but if I add another directory later on, e.g.:
First

restic -r repo backup /home/a /home/b

Second

restic -r repo backup /home/c

I will have the same issue again.

Is there no way to “merge” snapshots?

4

Then backup all home and use exclusions. You even have in docs exact your case example:

$HOME/*
!$HOME/Documents
!$HOME/code
!$HOME/.emacs.d
!$HOME/games

First you exclude all and later negate it for specific dirs.

2 Likes
5

AFAIK not with restic, but you can use the merge command from A restic client written in rust - #73 by Ataraxy (disclaimer: I’m the author of rustic)

1 Like
7

If you have a backup of a and b already, you can still add more folders like
restic -r repo backup /home/a /home/b /home/c

8

I handle this problem by tagging different backups, e.g. “home”, “system”, “games”. This way, when paths change, I can still manage backups effectively. restic find can be used to find specific files.

9

you won’t have the same issue again if in that last run you also include /home/a and /home/b

Then you could even delete the previous snapshot (unless you need the historical content of a and b)

1 Like