Status file

If you need to escalate the result of your backup to a monitoring system, you can definitely use the run-after and run-after-fail scripting.

But sometimes we just need something simple that a monitoring system can regularly check. For that matter, resticprofile can generate a simple JSON file with the details of the latest backup/forget/check command. For example I have a Zabbix agent checking this file once a day, and so you can hook up any monitoring system that can interpret a JSON file.

In your profile, you simply need to add a new parameter, which is the location of your status file

version = "1"

[profile]
  status-file = "backup-status.json"

version: "1"

profile:
  status-file: backup-status.json

"profile" {
  "status-file" = "backup-status.json"
}

{
  "version": "1",
  "profile": {
    "status-file": "backup-status.json"
  }
}

Here’s an example of a generated file, where you can see that the last check failed, whereas the last backup succeeded:

{
  "profiles": {
    "self": {
      "backup": {
        "success": true,
        "time": "2021-03-24T16:36:56.831077Z",
        "error": "",
        "stderr": "",
        "duration": 16,
        "files_new": 215,
        "files_changed": 0,
        "files_unmodified": 0,
        "dirs_new": 58,
        "dirs_changed": 0,
        "dirs_unmodified": 0,
        "files_total": 215,
        "bytes_added": 296536447,
        "bytes_total": 362952485
      },
      "check": {
        "success": false,
        "time": "2021-03-24T15:23:40.270689Z",
        "error": "exit status 1",
        "stderr": "unable to create lock in backend: repository is already locked exclusively by PID 18534 on dingo by cloud_user (UID 501, GID 20)\nlock was created at 2021-03-24 15:23:29 (10.42277s ago)\nstorage ID 1bf636d2\nthe `unlock` command can be used to remove stale locks\n",
        "duration": 1
      }
    }
  }
}

⚠️ Extended status

In the backup section above you can see some fields like files_new, files_total, etc. This information is only available when resticprofile’s output is either not sent to the terminal (e.g. redirected) or when you add the flag extended-status to your backup configuration.

This is a technical limitation to ensure restic displays terminal output correctly.

extended-status or stdout redirection is not needed for these fields:

• success
• time
• error
• stderr
• duration

extended-status is not set by default because it hides any output from restic

version = "1"

[profile]
  status-file = "/home/backup/status.json"

  [profile.backup]
    extended-status = true
    source = "/go"
    exclude = [ "/**/.git/" ]

version: "1"

profile:
  status-file: /home/backup/status.json
  backup:
    extended-status: true
    source: /go
    exclude:
      - "/**/.git/"

"profile" = {
  "status-file" = "/home/backup/status.json"

  "backup" = {
    "extended-status" = true
    "source" = "/go"
    "exclude" = ["/**/.git/"]
  }
}

{
  "version": "1",
  "profile": {
    "status-file": "/home/backup/status.json",
    "backup": {
      "extended-status": true,
      "source": "/go",
      "exclude": [
        "/**/.git/"
      ]
    }
  }
}