restic/doc/050_restore.rst

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#####################
Restoring from backup
#####################

Restoring from a snapshot
=========================

Restoring a snapshot is as easy as it sounds, just use the following
command to restore the contents of the latest snapshot to
``/tmp/restore-work``:

.. code-block:: console

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo restore 79766175 --target /tmp/restore-work
    enter password for repository:
    restoring <Snapshot of [/home/user/work] at 2015-05-08 21:40:19.884408621 +0200 CEST> to /tmp/restore-work

Use the word ``latest`` to restore the last backup. You can also combine
``latest`` with the ``--host`` and ``--path`` filters to choose the last
backup for a specific host, path or both.

.. code-block:: console

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo restore latest --target /tmp/restore-art --path "/home/art" --host luigi
    enter password for repository:
    restoring <Snapshot of [/home/art] at 2015-05-08 21:45:17.884408621 +0200 CEST> to /tmp/restore-art

Use ``--exclude`` and ``--include`` to restrict the restore to a subset of
files in the snapshot. For example, to restore a single file:

.. code-block:: console

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo restore 79766175 --target /tmp/restore-work --include /work/foo
    enter password for repository:
    restoring <Snapshot of [/home/user/work] at 2015-05-08 21:40:19.884408621 +0200 CEST> to /tmp/restore-work

This will restore the file ``foo`` to ``/tmp/restore-work/work/foo``.

You can use the command ``restic ls latest`` or ``restic find foo`` to find the
path to the file within the snapshot. This pass you can then pass to
`--include` in verbatim to only restore the single file or directory.

Restore using mount
===================

Browsing your backup as a regular file system is also very easy. First,
create a mount point such as ``/mnt/restic`` and then use the following
command to serve the repository with FUSE:

.. code-block:: console

    $ mkdir /mnt/restic
    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo mount /mnt/restic
    enter password for repository:
    Now serving /srv/restic-repo at /mnt/restic
    Don't forget to umount after quitting!

Mounting repositories via FUSE is not possible on OpenBSD, Solaris/illumos
and Windows.

Restic supports storage and preservation of hard links. However, since
hard links exist in the scope of a filesystem by definition, restoring
hard links from a fuse mount should be done by a program that preserves
hard links. A program that does so is ``rsync``, used with the option
--hard-links.

Printing files to stdout
========================

Sometimes it's helpful to print files to stdout so that other programs can read
the data directly. This can be achieved by using the `dump` command, like this:

.. code-block:: console

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo dump latest production.sql | mysql