Snapshot size sometimes empty

Getting Help
1

Please see the output of my list_snapshots command; a you can see sometimes the snapshot size is empty. When I list the contents of these specific snapshots, then they do conain files/directories/etc. So they are not empty. Any clue why restic lists them as “no size”?

repository daade330 opened (version 2, compression level auto)
ID        Time                 Host                    Tags        Paths                      Size
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1b883199  2025-08-09 08:44:04  C064C9LK6W.localdomain              /Users/rlommers/Documents  15.447 GiB
48955319  2025-08-09 08:54:40  services                            /srv/local
6345e932  2025-08-09 12:49:41  C064C9LK6W.localdomain              /Users/rlommers/Documents  15.422 GiB
10c5a27d  2025-08-10 09:09:03  services                            /srv/local
ba0fa34a  2025-08-10 14:40:27  C064C9LK6W.localdomain              /Users/rlommers/Documents  15.422 GiB
d4235e13  2025-08-16 12:52:13  C064C9LK6W.localdomain              /Users/rlommers/Documents  15.422 GiB
b8d80473  2025-08-17 03:30:05  services                            /srv/local                 890.803 MiB
14716d78  2025-08-17 13:01:19  C064C9LK6W.localdomain              /Users/rlommers/Documents  15.436 GiB
6b840cf2  2025-08-18 19:15:22  C064C9LK6W.localdomain              /Users/rlommers/Documents  15.436 GiB
4e340af8  2025-08-22 13:12:35  C064C9LK6W.localdomain              /Users/rlommers/Documents  15.461 GiB
03806384  2025-08-24 03:30:05  services                            /srv/local                 945.378 MiB
3e03e3e7  2025-08-25 03:30:06  services                            /srv/local                 907.464 MiB
af82f55d  2025-08-26 03:30:05  services                            /srv/local                 910.659 MiB
54c6beef  2025-08-27 03:30:05  services                            /srv/local                 914.314 MiB
89cbd42d  2025-08-27 16:22:36  C064C9LK6W.localdomain              /Users/rlommers/Documents  18.845 GiB
989cdf92  2025-08-28 03:30:06  services                            /srv/local                 918.765 MiB
8bde2a9c  2025-08-29 09:04:35  services                            /srv/local                 924.280 MiB
e332844b  2025-08-30 03:30:05  services                            /srv/local                 926.592 MiB
8c7deb15  2025-08-31 03:30:05  services                            /srv/local                 928.303 MiB
c0b2fedb  2025-09-01 03:30:05  services                            /srv/local                 930.517 MiB
be37ca78  2025-09-02 03:30:05  services                            /srv/local                 932.793 MiB
a31a19fd  2025-09-03 03:30:05  services                            /srv/local                 936.577 MiB
65661c37  2025-09-04 03:30:05  services                            /srv/local                 940.023 MiB
c2bc46ae  2025-09-04 08:10:16  macbook-kubus                       /Users/rlommers/Documents  19.841 GiB
c66bf016  2025-09-04 08:11:50  services                            /srv/local                 940.313 MiB
018fe5e2  2025-09-05 03:30:06  services                            /srv/local                 942.685 MiB
8b370196  2025-09-06 03:30:06  services                            /srv/local                 945.756 MiB
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
27 snapshots
2

For example which one is empty?

3

The second one: “48955319“.
And the fourth one: “10c5a27d“.
The “size” column is empty. What does this mean?
(it could be that I’m interpreting it wrong :slight_smile: )

4

Ok. Clearly they were simply empty. There was no data to backup.

Only staring with `b8d80473` it includes something,

5

Those snapshots were created with a restic version that didn’t store the snapshot size information. An empty snapshot created by a recent version would display as 0 B.

You can get the full metadata of a snapshot using restic cat snapshot 48955319. Does the output include a program_version field?

6

No, they were not empty.

@MichaelEischer , I think you were right. See below, indeed the restic binary version is different.

[scripts] on master [!]$ restic-backup-hetzner.sh snapshot_info 48955319
repository daade330 opened (version 2, compression level auto)
{
  "time": "2025-08-09T08:54:40.533866023+02:00",
  "tree": "7a324dcd755448662bf456dc99bfb2ca0d73ba5d18389063c76c6f510a7807e4",
  "paths": [
    "/srv/local"
  ],
  "hostname": "services",
  "username": "rlommers",
  "uid": 1000,
  "gid": 1000,
  "excludes": [
    "services/chromium-container/*"
  ],
  "program_version": "restic 0.16.4"
}
[scripts] on master [!]$ restic-backup-hetzner.sh snapshot_info b8d80473
repository daade330 opened (version 2, compression level auto)
{
  "time": "2025-08-17T03:30:05.292589419+02:00",
  "parent": "9dee9362d0b66a4ab8cc41b44d3b40a3fb96b3a9109a0c9bd5568a92514a5890",
  "tree": "7bad2ff4c8251044f9462640ef50b50c423cab71fdd90af9f302bdce2843c67e",
  "paths": [
    "/srv/local"
  ],
  "hostname": "services",
  "username": "rlommers",
  "uid": 1000,
  "gid": 1000,
  "excludes": [
    "services/chromium-container/*"
  ],
  "program_version": "restic 0.18.0",
  "summary": {
    "backup_start": "2025-08-17T03:30:05.292589419+02:00",
    "backup_end": "2025-08-17T03:30:16.490468226+02:00",
    "files_new": 1,
    "files_changed": 215,
    "files_unmodified": 1236,
    "dirs_new": 0,
    "dirs_changed": 31,
    "dirs_unmodified": 25,
    "data_blobs": 1482,
    "tree_blobs": 30,
    "data_added": 717193743,
    "data_added_packed": 210701350,
    "total_files_processed": 1452,
    "total_bytes_processed": 934075086
  }
}
7

The snapshot size information is only included started from restic 0.17.0, so this checks out.

8

Problem solved, thanks for thinking along…