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doc: Refactors the documentation

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This commit refactors the documentation according to my proposal in #1273
and the discussion I had with fd0 on IRC.

The bits from the manual that I could not immediately put into the new
structure are contained in manual_rest.rst Anything else is still there,
nothing has been deleted.

I changed the heading markup to follow the convention used in Python’s
Style Guide for documentation, this convention is explained in a comment
at the top of every file.

I also added a paragraph on installing restic on Debian.
This commit is contained in:
Jan Niggemann
2017-09-30 22:01:19 +02:00
committed by Alexander Neumann
parent 3afd974dea
commit f5b550191c
20 changed files with 1711 additions and 1502 deletions
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Manual
======
Usage help
----------
Usage help is available:
.. code-block:: console
$ ./restic --help
restic is a backup program which allows saving multiple revisions of files and
directories in an encrypted repository stored on different backends.
Usage:
restic [command]
Available Commands:
autocomplete Generate shell autocompletion script
backup Create a new backup of files and/or directories
cat Print internal objects to stdout
check Check the repository for errors
dump Dump data structures
find Find a file or directory
forget Remove snapshots from the repository
help Help about any command
init Initialize a new repository
key Manage keys (passwords)
list List items in the repository
ls List files in a snapshot
mount Mount the repository
prune Remove unneeded data from the repository
rebuild-index Build a new index file
restore Extract the data from a snapshot
snapshots List all snapshots
tag Modify tags on snapshots
unlock Remove locks other processes created
version Print version information
Flags:
--json set output mode to JSON for commands that support it
--no-lock do not lock the repo, this allows some operations on read-only repos
-p, --password-file string read the repository password from a file
-q, --quiet do not output comprehensive progress report
-r, --repo string repository to backup to or restore from (default: $RESTIC_REPOSITORY)
Use "restic [command] --help" for more information about a command.
Similar to programs such as ``git``, restic has a number of
sub-commands. You can see these commands in the listing above. Each
sub-command may have own command-line options, and there is a help
option for each command which lists them, e.g. for the ``backup``
command:
.. code-block:: console
$ ./restic backup --help
The "backup" command creates a new snapshot and saves the files and directories
given as the arguments.
Usage:
restic backup [flags] FILE/DIR [FILE/DIR] ...
Flags:
-e, --exclude pattern exclude a pattern (can be specified multiple times)
--exclude-file string read exclude patterns from a file
--files-from string read the files to backup from file (can be combined with file args)
-f, --force force re-reading the target files/directories. Overrides the "parent" flag
-x, --one-file-system Exclude other file systems
--parent string use this parent snapshot (default: last snapshot in the repo that has the same target files/directories)
--stdin read backup from stdin
--stdin-filename string file name to use when reading from stdin
--tag tag add a tag for the new snapshot (can be specified multiple times)
--time string time of the backup (ex. '2012-11-01 22:08:41') (default: now)
Global Flags:
--json set output mode to JSON for commands that support it
--no-lock do not lock the repo, this allows some operations on read-only repos
-p, --password-file string read the repository password from a file
-q, --quiet do not output comprehensive progress report
-r, --repo string repository to backup to or restore from (default: $RESTIC_REPOSITORY)
Subcommand that support showing progress information such as ``backup``,
``check`` and ``prune`` will do so unless the quiet flag ``-q`` or
``--quiet`` is set. When running from a non-interactive console progress
reporting will be limited to once every 10 seconds to not fill your
logs.
Additionally on Unix systems if ``restic`` receives a SIGUSR signal the
current progress will written to the standard output so you can check up
on the status at will.
Manage tags
-----------
Managing tags on snapshots is done with the ``tag`` command. The
existing set of tags can be replaced completely, tags can be added to
removed. The result is directly visible in the ``snapshots`` command.
Let's say we want to tag snapshot ``590c8fc8`` with the tags ``NL`` and
``CH`` and remove all other tags that may be present, the following
command does that:
.. code-block:: console
$ restic -r /tmp/backup tag --set NL --set CH 590c8fc8
Create exclusive lock for repository
Modified tags on 1 snapshots
Note the snapshot ID has changed, so between each change we need to look
up the new ID of the snapshot. But there is an even better way, the
``tag`` command accepts ``--tag`` for a filter, so we can filter
snapshots based on the tag we just added.
So we can add and remove tags incrementally like this:
.. code-block:: console
$ restic -r /tmp/backup tag --tag NL --remove CH
Create exclusive lock for repository
Modified tags on 1 snapshots
$ restic -r /tmp/backup tag --tag NL --add UK
Create exclusive lock for repository
Modified tags on 1 snapshots
$ restic -r /tmp/backup tag --tag NL --remove NL
Create exclusive lock for repository
Modified tags on 1 snapshots
$ restic -r /tmp/backup tag --tag NL --add SOMETHING
No snapshots were modified
Under the hood
--------------
Browse repository objects
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Internally, a repository stores data of several different types
described in the `design
documentation <https://github.com/restic/restic/blob/master/doc/Design.rst>`__.
You can ``list`` objects such as blobs, packs, index, snapshots, keys or
locks with the following command:
.. code-block:: console
$ restic -r /tmp/backup list snapshots
d369ccc7d126594950bf74f0a348d5d98d9e99f3215082eb69bf02dc9b3e464c
The ``find`` command searches for a given
`pattern <http://golang.org/pkg/path/filepath/#Match>`__ in the
repository.
.. code-block:: console
$ restic -r backup find test.txt
debug log file restic.log
debug enabled
enter password for repository:
found 1 matching entries in snapshot 196bc5760c909a7681647949e80e5448e276521489558525680acf1bd428af36
-rw-r--r-- 501 20 5 2015-08-26 14:09:57 +0200 CEST path/to/test.txt
The ``cat`` command allows you to display the JSON representation of the
objects or its raw content.
.. code-block:: console
$ restic -r /tmp/backup cat snapshot d369ccc7d126594950bf74f0a348d5d98d9e99f3215082eb69bf02dc9b3e464c
enter password for repository:
{
"time": "2015-08-12T12:52:44.091448856+02:00",
"tree": "05cec17e8d3349f402576d02576a2971fc0d9f9776ce2f441c7010849c4ff5af",
"paths": [
"/home/user/work"
],
"hostname": "kasimir",
"username": "username",
"uid": 501,
"gid": 20
}
Metadata handling
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Restic saves and restores most default attributes, including extended attributes like ACLs.
Sparse files are not handled in a special way yet, and aren't restored.
The following metadata is handled by restic:
- Name
- Type
- Mode
- ModTime
- AccessTime
- ChangeTime
- UID
- GID
- User
- Group
- Inode
- Size
- Links
- LinkTarget
- Device
- Content
- Subtree
- ExtendedAttributes
Scripting
---------
Restic supports the output of some commands in JSON format, the JSON
data can then be processed by other programs (e.g.
`jq <https://stedolan.github.io/jq/>`__). The following example
lists all snapshots as JSON and uses ``jq`` to pretty-print the result:
.. code-block:: console
$ restic -r /tmp/backup snapshots --json | jq .
[
{
"time": "2017-03-11T09:57:43.26630619+01:00",
"tree": "bf25241679533df554fc0fd0ae6dbb9dcf1859a13f2bc9dd4543c354eff6c464",
"paths": [
"/home/work/doc"
],
"hostname": "kasimir",
"username": "fd0",
"uid": 1000,
"gid": 100,
"id": "bbeed6d28159aa384d1ccc6fa0b540644b1b9599b162d2972acda86b1b80f89e"
},
{
"time": "2017-03-11T09:58:57.541446938+01:00",
"tree": "7f8c95d3420baaac28dc51609796ae0e0ecfb4862b609a9f38ffaf7ae2d758da",
"paths": [
"/home/user/shared"
],
"hostname": "kasimir",
"username": "fd0",
"uid": 1000,
"gid": 100,
"id": "b157d91c16f0ba56801ece3a708dfc53791fe2a97e827090d6ed9a69a6ebdca0"
}
]
Temporary files
---------------
During some operations (e.g. ``backup`` and ``prune``) restic uses
temporary files to store data. These files will, by default, be saved to
the system's temporary directory, on Linux this is usually located in
``/tmp/``. The environment variable ``TMPDIR`` can be used to specify a
different directory, e.g. to use the directory ``/var/tmp/restic-tmp``
instead of the default, set the environment variable like this:
.. code-block:: console
$ export TMPDIR=/var/tmp/restic-tmp
$ restic -r /tmp/backup backup ~/work
Caching
-------
Restic keeps a cache with some files from the repository on the local machine.
This allows faster operations, since meta data does not need to be loaded from
a remote repository. The cache is automatically created, usually in the
directory ``.cache/restic`` in the user's home directory. The environment
variable ``XDG_CACHE_DIR`` or the command line parameter ``--cache-dir`` can
each be used to specify where the cache is located. The parameter
``--no-cache`` disables the cache entirely. In this case, all data is loaded
from the repo.
The cache is ephemeral: When a file cannot be read from the cache, it is loaded
from the repository.