Chapter 4

Schedules

resticprofile is capable of managing scheduled backups for you. Under the hood it’s using:

  • launchd on macOS X
  • Task Scheduler on Windows
  • systemd where available (Linux and other BSDs)
  • crond on supported platforms (Linux and other BSDs)

On unixes (except macOS) resticprofile is using systemd by default. crond can be used instead if configured in global scheduler parameter:

[global]
  scheduler = "crond"
---
global:
    scheduler: crond
"global" = {
  "scheduler" = "crond"
}
{
  "global": {
    "scheduler": "crond"
  }
}

Each profile can be scheduled independently (groups are not available for scheduling yet - it will be available in version ‘2’ of the configuration file).

These 5 profile sections are accepting a schedule configuration:

  • backup
  • check
  • forget (version 0.11.0)
  • prune (version 0.11.0)
  • copy (version 0.16.0)

which mean you can schedule backup, forget, prune, check and copy independently (I recommend using a local lock in this case).

retention schedule is deprecated

Starting from version 0.11.0, directly scheduling the retention section is deprecated: Use the forget section for direct schedule instead.

The retention section is designed to be associated with a backup section, not to be scheduled independently.