bkp internally uses restic for the backup execution.
There is two types of config files that bkp uses, namely targets and jobs.
A target could be your external hard drive or any other backend restic currently supports.
The syntax for both is YAML.
The paths searched for config are:
/etc/bkp
~/.bkp
.bkp (relative to current working dir)
You can have arbitrary folder layout inside the targets and jobs folders. Use this to group and organize your backup jobs.
First create a target, for example in /etc/bkp/targets/external-hdd.yml:
name: exthdd
password: thisismybackuppassword
type: local
path: /run/media/johannes/EXTDISK/backup/restic/Then create a first job that uses this target for backup, located in /etc/bkp/jobs/root.yml:
name: root
description: Backup of the root partition of my personal laptop
# config
source: /
target: exthdd
args:
- "--exclude-file"
- "/etc/bkp/restic-exclude"
- "--exclude"
- "/run/storage"
To check the configuration bkp sees, you can call the jobs command:
bkp jobs
which would output this:
1 job evaluated
"root" to "external" (defined in /etc/bkp/jobs/root.yml)
If you make sure your external hard disk is mounted at the path given in its config, the job should be marked as relevant. Check like this:
bkp jobs --relevant
1 job evaluated
1 job relevant
"Root" to "external" (defined in /etc/bkp/jobs/root.yml)
Creating a new backup should be as simple as invoking – and it is!
bkp
This will offer all relevant backup jobs for you to choose from. For automation purposes you can add the --all parameter preventing the question.
Be prepared the backup can possibly take a lot of time in case it is the first run. Subsequent runs will be a lot faster and require almost no space apart of changed files.
Call bkp restore root to mount the target for restore.