---
title: "rclone serve restic"
description: "Serve the remote for restic's REST API."
slug: rclone_serve_restic
url: /commands/rclone_serve_restic/
# autogenerated - DO NOT EDIT, instead edit the source code in cmd/serve/restic/ and as part of making a release run "make commanddocs"
---
# 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.

Adding --cache-objects=false will cause rclone to stop caching objects
returned from the List call. Caching is normally desirable as it speeds
up downloading objects, saves transactions and uses very little memory.

## 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 `/<username>/`.

## Server options

Use --addr to specify which IP address and port the server should
listen on, e.g. --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.

--template allows a user to specify a custom markup template for http
and webdav serve functions. The server exports the following markup
to be used within the template to server pages:

### 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 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.
--cache-objects cache listed objects (default true)
--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
--template string User Specified Template.
--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.