Q: "Best Practices"

[zz0rk]

https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest/wiki#best-practices

Best Practices
Configure a reasonable retention policy for each plan. Backrest performs well up to a history of ~1000s of snapshots but too many may eventually slow performance.
Backup your configuration (e.g. $BACKREST_CONFIG or $HOME/.config/backrest/config.json by default on Linux/MacOS)
Your configuration contains the encryption keys for your repositories. If you loose this file you will not be able to restore your backups.
You may alternatively backup your encryption keys individually in which case you will be able to use restic directly to restore your backups.

1. I can't find the backrest configuration file at ~/.config/backrest/config.json. I run Debian 12.
   Also: $ whereis backrest
   backrest: /usr/local/bin/backrest

2. You mention the encryption key/s. Do you mean what the restic documentation refers to as the "repo password"? I just want to make sure I am not missing something.

BTW, fantastic tool and great name!

Thank you

[garethgeorge]

Hey, glad Backrest is working well for you!

Re: the config.json, make sure you're checking the home directory of the user running backrest (is it possible you installed with sudo? Backrest may be running as root e.g. /root/.config/backrest/config.json

Find the systemd config that you added to be sure.

Re: encryption keys, yep this is the repo password! Make sure you have that saved somewhere at a minimum as with the repo password and the URI you can always add the repo to another backrest installation and restore from there. I still recommend backing up the whole config as it's convenient and will retain your configured backup plans, etc.

[zz0rk]

@garethgeorge Yeah, I installed it as root, 🤦
Thanks for clarifying my encryption keys question.
Thanks again for this great tool.