doc/020_installation.rst
.. Normally, there are no heading levels assigned to certain characters as the structure is determined from the succession of headings. However, this convention is used in Python’s Style Guide for documenting which you may follow:
############ Installation ############
Packages
Note that if at any point the package you’re trying to use is outdated, you always have the option to use an official binary from the restic project.
These are up to date binaries, built in a reproducible and verifiable way, that you can download and run without having to do additional installation work.
Please see the :ref:official_binaries section below for various downloads.
Official binaries can be updated in place by using the restic self-update
command.
The environment variable $GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN can be set to use a personal
access token when updating. This increases the rate limit through authenticated GitHub API
requests, and prevents update failures when many
unauthenticated requests have already been made from the same IP.
On Alpine Linux <https://www.alpinelinux.org>__ you can install the restic
package from the official community repos, e.g. using apk:
.. code-block:: console
$ apk add restic
On Arch Linux <https://archlinux.org/>__, there is a package called restic
installed from the official community repos, e.g. with pacman -S:
.. code-block:: console
$ pacman -S restic
On Debian, there's a package called restic which can be
installed from the official repos, e.g. with apt-get:
.. code-block:: console
$ apt-get install restic
restic can be installed using dnf:
.. code-block:: console
$ dnf install restic
If you used restic from copr previously, remove the copr repo as follows to avoid any conflicts:
.. code-block:: console
$ dnf copr remove copart/restic
On Gentoo Linux <https://www.gentoo.org/>__, you can install the restic
package from the official repos using emerge:
.. code-block:: console
# emerge restic
If you are using macOS, you can install restic using Homebrew <https://brew.sh/>__:
.. code-block:: console
$ brew install restic
On Linux and macOS, you can also install it using pkgx <https://pkgx.sh/>__:
.. code-block:: console
$ pkgx install restic
You may also install it using MacPorts <https://www.macports.org/>__:
.. code-block:: console
$ sudo port install restic
If you are using Nix / NixOS <https://nixos.org>,
there is a package named restic avaliable in nixpkgs <https://search.nixos.org/packages?query=restic>.
You can install it by adding this to your configuration.nix:
.. code-block:: console
environment.systemPackages = [
pkgs.restic
];
On OpenBSD 6.3 and greater, you can install restic using pkg_add:
.. code-block:: console
# pkg_add restic
On FreeBSD (11 and probably later versions), you can install restic using pkg install:
.. code-block:: console
# pkg install restic
On openSUSE (leap 15.0 and greater, and tumbleweed), you can install restic using the zypper package manager:
.. code-block:: console
# zypper install restic
For supported RHEL / CentOS Stream releases, restic can be installed from the EPEL repository:
.. code-block:: console
$ dnf install epel-release
$ dnf install restic
restic can be installed from the official repo of Solus via the eopkg package manager:
.. code-block:: console
$ eopkg install restic
restic can be installed using either Scoop <https://scoop.sh/>__ or WinGet <https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/package-manager/>__.
Regardless of the method, the restic.exe binary will be added to your PATH automatically, making the restic command accessible in Powershell or CMD.
.. code-block:: console
scoop install restic
.. code-block:: console
winget install --exact --id restic.restic --scope Machine
By default, WinGet will install restic into the User scope, which is typically in your user's %LOCALAPPDATA% directory. This behavior may be undesirable for system-wide backups, so specifying --scope Machine is recommended so that restic is installed into %ProgramFiles%. This requires elevation.
.. _official_binaries:
Official Binaries
You can download the latest stable release versions of restic from the restic release page <https://github.com/restic/restic/releases/latest>__. These builds
are considered stable and releases are made regularly in a controlled manner.
There's both pre-compiled binaries for different platforms as well as the source code available for download. Just download and run the one matching your system.
On your first installation, if you desire, you can verify the integrity of your
downloads by testing the SHA-256 checksums listed in SHA256SUMS and verifying
the integrity of the file SHA256SUMS with the PGP signature in SHA256SUMS.asc.
The PGP signature was created using the key (0x91A6868BD3F7A907 <https://restic.net/gpg-key-alex.asc>__):
::
pub 4096R/91A6868BD3F7A907 2014-11-01
Key fingerprint = CF8F 18F2 8445 7597 3F79 D4E1 91A6 868B D3F7 A907
uid Alexander Neumann <[email protected]>
sub 4096R/D5FC2ACF4043FDF1 2014-11-01
Once downloaded, the official binaries can be updated in place using the
restic self-update command (needs restic 0.9.3 or later):
.. code-block:: console
$ restic version
restic 0.9.3 compiled with go1.11.2 on linux/amd64
$ restic self-update
find latest release of restic at GitHub
latest version is 0.9.4
download file SHA256SUMS
download SHA256SUMS
download file SHA256SUMS
download SHA256SUMS.asc
GPG signature verification succeeded
download restic_0.9.4_linux_amd64.bz2
downloaded restic_0.9.4_linux_amd64.bz2
saved 12115904 bytes in ./restic
successfully updated restic to version 0.9.4
$ restic version
restic 0.9.4 compiled with go1.12.1 on linux/amd64
The self-update command uses the GPG signature on the files uploaded to
GitHub to verify their authenticity. No external programs are necessary.
.. note:: Please be aware that the user executing the restic self-update
command must have the permission to replace the restic binary.
If you want to save the downloaded restic binary into a different file, pass
the file name via the option --output.
Another option is to use the latest builds for the master branch, available on
the restic beta download site <https://beta.restic.net/?sort=time&order=desc>__. These too are pre-compiled
and ready to run, and a new version is built every time a push is made to the
master branch.
Docker Container
We're maintaining a bare docker container with just a few files and the restic
binary, you can get it with docker pull like this:
.. code-block:: console
$ docker pull restic/restic
The container is also available on the GitHub Container Registry:
.. code-block:: console
$ docker pull ghcr.io/restic/restic
Restic relies on the hostname for various operations. Make sure to set a static
hostname using --hostname when creating a Docker container, otherwise Docker
will assign a random hostname each time.
The container additionally honors traditional nice (man page) <https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/nice.1.html>__ and ionice (man page) <https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ionice.1.html#OPTIONS>__ directives via the following environment variables.
This allows restic to be scheduled as a background process to reduce latency for the system while running.
NICE: If set, this adjusts the CPU prioritization via nice -n. This defaults to no adjustment - standard CPU priority.IONICE_CLASS: If set, this adjusts the IO prioritization of the restic process via ionice -c for the available classes.
Note: if you attempt to set real-time, you will have to add the SYS_NICE capability (see capabilities manpage <https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/capabilities.7.html#DESCRIPTION>__) to allow using this IO class.IONICE_PRIORITY: This defaults to 4 (no prioritization or penalties); this is the prioritization within the given IONICE_CLASS.The following example runs restic such that other CPU and IO requests have higher priority. This effectively perturbs the system as minimally as possible while restic runs.
.. code-block:: console
# docker run -e NICE=20 -e IONICE_CLASS=2 -e IONICE_PRIORITY=7 ghcr.io/restic/restic
Remember that this invocation is explicitly telling your CPU and IO scheduler to deprioritize restic. This typically will result in a longer runtime. For a system with heavy load, this can be drastically longer.
From Source
restic is written in the Go programming language and you need at least
Go version 1.24. Building restic may also work with older versions of Go,
but that's not supported. See the Getting started <https://go.dev/doc/install>__ guide of the Go project for
instructions how to install Go.
In order to build restic from source, execute the following steps:
.. code-block:: console
$ git clone https://github.com/restic/restic
[...]
$ cd restic
$ go run build.go
You can easily cross-compile restic for all supported platforms, just supply the target OS and platform via the command-line options like this (for Windows and FreeBSD respectively):
.. code-block:: console
$ go run build.go --goos windows --goarch amd64
$ go run build.go --goos freebsd --goarch 386
$ go run build.go --goos linux --goarch arm --goarm 6
$ go run build.go --goos solaris --goarch amd64
The resulting binary is statically linked and does not require any libraries.
At the moment, the only tested compiler for restic is the official Go compiler. Building restic with gccgo may work, but is not supported.
Autocompletion
Restic can write out man pages and bash/fish/zsh/powershell compatible autocompletion scripts:
.. code-block:: console
$ ./restic generate --help
The "generate" command writes automatically generated files (like the man pages
and the auto-completion files for bash, fish, zsh and powershell).
Usage:
restic generate [flags] [command]
Flags:
--bash-completion file write bash completion file
--fish-completion file write fish completion file
-h, --help help for generate
--man directory write man pages to directory
--powershell-completion write powershell completion file
--zsh-completion file write zsh completion file
Example for using sudo to write a bash completion script directly to the system-wide location:
.. code-block:: console
$ sudo ./restic generate --bash-completion /etc/bash_completion.d/restic
writing bash completion file to /etc/bash_completion.d/restic
Example for using sudo to write a zsh completion script directly to the system-wide location:
.. code-block:: console
$ sudo ./restic generate --zsh-completion /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions/_restic
writing zsh completion file to /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions/_restic
.. note:: The path for the --bash-completion option may vary depending on
the operating system used, e.g. /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/restic
in Debian and derivatives. Please look up the correct path in the appropriate
documentation.
Example for setting up a powershell completion script for the local user's profile:
.. code-block:: pwsh-session
# Create profile if one does not exist
PS> If (!(Test-Path $PROFILE.CurrentUserAllHosts)) {New-Item -Path $PROFILE.CurrentUserAllHosts -Force}
PS> $ProfileDir = (Get-Item $PROFILE.CurrentUserAllHosts).Directory
# Generate Restic completions in the same directory as the profile
PS> restic generate --powershell-completion "$ProfileDir\restic-completion.ps1"
# Append to the profile file the command to load Restic completions
PS> Add-Content -Path $PROFILE.CurrentUserAllHosts -Value "`r`nImport-Module $ProfileDir\restic-completion.ps1"