--- date: 2019-08-26T15:19:45+01:00 title: "rclone serve restic" slug: rclone_serve_restic url: /commands/rclone_serve_restic/ --- ## rclone serve restic Serve the remote for restic's REST API. ### Synopsis rclone serve restic implements restic's REST backend API over HTTP. This allows restic to use rclone as a data storage mechanism for cloud providers that restic does not support directly. [Restic](https://restic.net/) is a command line program for doing backups. The server will log errors. Use -v to see access logs. --bwlimit will be respected for file transfers. Use --stats to control the stats printing. ### Setting up rclone for use by restic ### First [set up a remote for your chosen cloud provider](/docs/#configure). Once you have set up the remote, check it is working with, for example "rclone lsd remote:". You may have called the remote something other than "remote:" - just substitute whatever you called it in the following instructions. Now start the rclone restic server rclone serve restic -v remote:backup Where you can replace "backup" in the above by whatever path in the remote you wish to use. By default this will serve on "localhost:8080" you can change this with use of the "--addr" flag. You might wish to start this server on boot. ### Setting up restic to use rclone ### Now you can [follow the restic instructions](http://restic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/030_preparing_a_new_repo.html#rest-server) on setting up restic. Note that you will need restic 0.8.2 or later to interoperate with rclone. For the example above you will want to use "http://localhost:8080/" as the URL for the REST server. For example: $ export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=rest:http://localhost:8080/ $ export RESTIC_PASSWORD=yourpassword $ restic init created restic backend 8b1a4b56ae at rest:http://localhost:8080/ Please note that knowledge of your password is required to access the repository. Losing your password means that your data is irrecoverably lost. $ restic backup /path/to/files/to/backup scan [/path/to/files/to/backup] scanned 189 directories, 312 files in 0:00 [0:00] 100.00% 38.128 MiB / 38.128 MiB 501 / 501 items 0 errors ETA 0:00 duration: 0:00 snapshot 45c8fdd8 saved #### Multiple repositories #### Note that you can use the endpoint to host multiple repositories. Do this by adding a directory name or path after the URL. Note that these **must** end with /. Eg $ export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=rest:http://localhost:8080/user1repo/ # backup user1 stuff $ export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=rest:http://localhost:8080/user2repo/ # backup user2 stuff #### Private repositories #### The "--private-repos" flag can be used to limit users to repositories starting with a path of "//". ### Server options Use --addr to specify which IP address and port the server should listen on, eg --addr 1.2.3.4:8000 or --addr :8080 to listen to all IPs. By default it only listens on localhost. You can use port :0 to let the OS choose an available port. If you set --addr to listen on a public or LAN accessible IP address then using Authentication is advised - see the next section for info. --server-read-timeout and --server-write-timeout can be used to control the timeouts on the server. Note that this is the total time for a transfer. --max-header-bytes controls the maximum number of bytes the server will accept in the HTTP header. --baseurl controls the URL prefix that rclone serves from. By default rclone will serve from the root. If you used --baseurl "/rclone" then rclone would serve from a URL starting with "/rclone/". This is useful if you wish to proxy rclone serve. Rclone automatically inserts leading and trailing "/" on --baseurl, so --baseurl "rclone", --baseurl "/rclone" and --baseurl "/rclone/" are all treated identically. #### Authentication By default this will serve files without needing a login. You can either use an htpasswd file which can take lots of users, or set a single username and password with the --user and --pass flags. Use --htpasswd /path/to/htpasswd to provide an htpasswd file. This is in standard apache format and supports MD5, SHA1 and BCrypt for basic authentication. Bcrypt is recommended. To create an htpasswd file: touch htpasswd htpasswd -B htpasswd user htpasswd -B htpasswd anotherUser The password file can be updated while rclone is running. Use --realm to set the authentication realm. #### SSL/TLS By default this will serve over http. If you want you can serve over https. You will need to supply the --cert and --key flags. If you wish to do client side certificate validation then you will need to supply --client-ca also. --cert should be a either a PEM encoded certificate or a concatenation of that with the CA certificate. --key should be the PEM encoded private key and --client-ca should be the PEM encoded client certificate authority certificate. ``` rclone serve restic remote:path [flags] ``` ### Options ``` --addr string IPaddress:Port or :Port to bind server to. (default "localhost:8080") --append-only disallow deletion of repository data --baseurl string Prefix for URLs - leave blank for root. --cert string SSL PEM key (concatenation of certificate and CA certificate) --client-ca string Client certificate authority to verify clients with -h, --help help for restic --htpasswd string htpasswd file - if not provided no authentication is done --key string SSL PEM Private key --max-header-bytes int Maximum size of request header (default 4096) --pass string Password for authentication. --private-repos users can only access their private repo --realm string realm for authentication (default "rclone") --server-read-timeout duration Timeout for server reading data (default 1h0m0s) --server-write-timeout duration Timeout for server writing data (default 1h0m0s) --stdio run an HTTP2 server on stdin/stdout --user string User name for authentication. ``` See the [global flags page](/flags/) for global options not listed here. ### SEE ALSO * [rclone serve](/commands/rclone_serve/) - Serve a remote over a protocol.