Changelog for restic 0.17.0 (2024-07-26)

The following sections list the changes in restic 0.17.0 relevant to restic users. The changes are ordered by importance.

Summary

• Fix #3600: Handle unreadable xattrs in folders above backup source
• Fix #4209: Fix slow SFTP upload performance
• Fix #4503: Correct hardlink handling in stats command
• Fix #4568: Prevent forget --keep-tags <invalid> from deleting all snapshots
• Fix #4615: Make find not sometimes ignore directories
• Fix #4656: Properly report ID of newly added keys
• Fix #4703: Shutdown cleanly when receiving SIGTERM
• Fix #4709: Correct --no-lock handling of ls and tag commands
• Fix #4760: Fix possible error on concurrent cache cleanup
• Fix #4850: Handle UTF-16 password files in key command correctly
• Fix #4902: Update snapshot summary on rewrite
• Chg #956: Return exit code 10 and 11 for non-existing and locked repository
• Chg #4540: Require at least ARMv6 for ARM binaries
• Chg #4602: Deprecate legacy index format and s3legacy repository layout
• Chg #4627: Redesign backend error handling to improve reliability
• Chg #4707: Disable S3 anonymous authentication by default
• Chg #4744: Include full key ID in JSON output of key list
• Enh #662: Optionally skip snapshot creation if nothing changed
• Enh #693: Include snapshot size in snapshots output
• Enh #805: Add bitrot detection to diff command
• Enh #828: Improve features of the repair packs command
• Enh #1786: Support repositories with empty password
• Enh #2348: Add --delete option to restore command
• Enh #3067: Add extended options to configure Windows Shadow Copy Service
• Enh #3406: Improve dump performance for large files
• Enh #3806: Optimize and make prune command resumable
• Enh #4006: (alpha) Store deviceID only for hardlinks
• Enh #4048: Add support for FUSE-T with mount on macOS
• Enh #4251: Support reading backup from a command's standard output
• Enh #4287: Support connection to rest-server using unix socket
• Enh #4354: Significantly reduce prune memory usage
• Enh #4437: Make check command create non-existent cache directory
• Enh #4472: Support AWS Assume Role for S3 backend
• Enh #4547: Add --json option to version command
• Enh #4549: Add --ncdu option to ls command
• Enh #4573: Support rewriting host and time metadata in snapshots
• Enh #4583: Ignore s3.storage-class archive tiers for metadata
• Enh #4590: Speed up mount command's error detection
• Enh #4601: Add support for feature flags
• Enh #4611: Back up more file metadata on Windows
• Enh #4664: Make ls use message_type field in JSON output
• Enh #4676: Make key command's actions separate sub-commands
• Enh #4678: Add --target option to the dump command
• Enh #4708: Back up and restore SecurityDescriptors on Windows
• Enh #4733: Allow specifying --host via environment variable
• Enh #4737: Include snapshot ID in reason field of forget JSON output
• Enh #4764: Support forgetting all snapshots
• Enh #4768: Allow specifying custom User-Agent for outgoing requests
• Enh #4781: Add restore options to read include/exclude patterns from files
• Enh #4807: Support Extended Attributes on Windows NTFS
• Enh #4817: Make overwrite behavior of restore customizable
• Enh #4839: Add dry-run support to restore command

Details

• Bugfix #3600: Handle unreadable xattrs in folders above backup source

  When backup sources are specified using absolute paths, backup also includes information about the parent folders of the backup sources in the snapshot.

  If the extended attributes for some of these folders could not be read due to missing permissions, this caused the backup to fail. This has now been fixed.

  #3600 #4668 https://forum.restic.net/t/parent-directories-above-the-snapshot-source-path-fatal-error-permission-denied/7216

• Bugfix #4209: Fix slow SFTP upload performance

  Since restic 0.12.1, the upload speed of the sftp backend to a remote server has regressed significantly. This has now been fixed.

  #4209 #4782

• Bugfix #4503: Correct hardlink handling in stats command

  If files on different devices had the same inode ID, the stats command did not correctly calculate the snapshot size. This has now been fixed.

  #4503 #4006 https://forum.restic.net/t/possible-bug-in-stats/6461/8

• Bugfix #4568: Prevent forget --keep-tags <invalid> from deleting all snapshots

  Running forget --keep-tags <invalid>, where <invalid> is a tag that does not exist in the repository, would remove all snapshots. This is especially problematic if the tag name contains a typo.

  The forget command now fails with an error if all snapshots in a snapshot group would be deleted. This prevents the above example from deleting all snapshots.

  It is possible to temporarily disable the new check by setting the environment variable RESTIC_FEATURES=safe-forget-keep-tags=false. Note that this feature flag will be removed in the next minor restic version.

  #4568 #4764

• Bugfix #4615: Make find not sometimes ignore directories

  In some cases, the find command ignored empty or moved directories. This has now been fixed.

  #4615

• Bugfix #4656: Properly report ID of newly added keys

  restic key add now reports the ID of the newly added key. This simplifies selecting a specific key using the --key-hint key option.

  #4656 #4657

• Bugfix #4703: Shutdown cleanly when receiving SIGTERM

  Previously, when restic received the SIGTERM signal it would terminate immediately, skipping cleanup and potentially causing issues like stale locks being left behind. This primarily effected containerized restic invocations that use SIGTERM, but could also be triggered via a simple killall restic.

  This has now been fixed, such that restic shuts down cleanly when receiving the SIGTERM signal.

  #4703

• Bugfix #4709: Correct --no-lock handling of ls and tag commands

  The ls command never locked the repository. This has now been fixed, with the old behavior still being supported using ls --no-lock. The latter invocation also works with older restic versions.

  The tag command erroneously accepted the --no-lock command. This command now always requires an exclusive lock.

  #4709

• Bugfix #4760: Fix possible error on concurrent cache cleanup

  If multiple restic processes concurrently cleaned up no longer existing files from the cache, this could cause some of the processes to fail with an no such file or directory error. This has now been fixed.

  #4760 #4761

• Bugfix #4850: Handle UTF-16 password files in key command correctly

  Previously, key add and key passwd did not properly decode UTF-16 encoded passwords read from a password file. This has now been fixed to correctly match the encoding when opening a repository.

  #4850 #4851

• Bugfix #4902: Update snapshot summary on rewrite

  Restic previously did not recalculate the total number of files and bytes processed when files were excluded from a snapshot by the rewrite command. This has now been fixed.

  #4902 #4905

• Change #956: Return exit code 10 and 11 for non-existing and locked repository

  If a repository does not exist or cannot be locked, restic previously always returned exit code 1. This made it difficult to distinguish these cases from other errors.

  Restic now returns exit code 10 if the repository does not exist, and exit code 11 if the repository could be not locked due to a conflicting lock.

  #956 #4884

• Change #4540: Require at least ARMv6 for ARM binaries

  The official release binaries of restic now require at least ARMv6 support for ARM platforms.

  #4540 #4542

• Change #4602: Deprecate legacy index format and s3legacy repository layout

  Support for the legacy index format used by restic before version 0.2.0 has been deprecated and will be removed in the next minor restic version. You can use restic repair index to update the index to the current format.

  It is possible to temporarily reenable support for the legacy index format by setting the environment variable RESTIC_FEATURES=deprecate-legacy-index=false. Note that this feature flag will be removed in the next minor restic version.

  Support for the s3legacy repository layout used for the S3 backend before restic 0.7.0 has been deprecated and will be removed in the next minor restic version. You can migrate your S3 repository to the current layout using RESTIC_FEATURES=deprecate-s3-legacy-layout=false restic migrate s3_layout.

  It is possible to temporarily reenable support for the s3legacy layout by setting the environment variable RESTIC_FEATURES=deprecate-s3-legacy-layout=false. Note that this feature flag will be removed in the next minor restic version.

  #4602 #4724 #4743

• Change #4627: Redesign backend error handling to improve reliability

  Restic now downloads pack files in large chunks instead of using a streaming download. This prevents failures due to interrupted streams. The restore command now also retries downloading individual blobs that could not be retrieved.

  HTTP requests that are stuck for more than two minutes while uploading or downloading are now forcibly interrupted. This ensures that stuck requests are retried after a short timeout.

  Attempts to access a missing or truncated file will no longer be retried. This avoids unnecessary retries in those cases. All other backend requests are retried for up to 15 minutes. This ensures that temporarily interrupted network connections can be tolerated.

  If a download yields a corrupt file or blob, then the download will be retried once.

  Most parts of the new backend error handling can temporarily be disabled by setting the environment variable RESTIC_FEATURES=backend-error-redesign=false. Note that this feature flag will be removed in the next minor restic version.

  #4627 #4193 #4515 #1523 #4605 #4792 #4520 #4800 #4784 #4844

• Change #4707: Disable S3 anonymous authentication by default

  When using the S3 backend with anonymous authentication, it continuously tried to retrieve new authentication credentials, causing bad performance.

  Now, to use anonymous authentication, it is necessary to pass the extended option -o s3.unsafe-anonymous-auth=true to restic.

  It is possible to temporarily revert to the old behavior by setting the environment variable RESTIC_FEATURES=explicit-s3-anonymous-auth=false. Note that this feature flag will be removed in the next minor restic version.

  #4707 #4908

• Change #4744: Include full key ID in JSON output of key list

  The JSON output of the key list command has changed to include the full key ID instead of just a shortened version of the ID, as the latter can be ambiguous in some rare cases. To derive the short ID, please truncate the full ID down to eight characters.

  #4744 #4745

• Enhancement #662: Optionally skip snapshot creation if nothing changed

  The backup command always created a snapshot even if nothing in the backup set changed compared to the parent snapshot.

  Restic now supports the --skip-if-unchanged option for the backup command, which omits creating a snapshot if the new snapshot's content would be identical to that of the parent snapshot.

  #662 #4816

• Enhancement #693: Include snapshot size in snapshots output

  The snapshots command now prints the size for snapshots created using this or a future restic version. To achieve this, the backup command now stores the backup summary statistics in the snapshot.

  The text output of the snapshots command only shows the snapshot size. The other statistics are only included in the JSON output. To inspect these statistics use restic snapshots --json or restic cat snapshot <snapshotID>.

  #693 #4705 #4913

• Enhancement #805: Add bitrot detection to diff command

  The output of the diff command now includes the modifier ? for files to indicate bitrot in backed up files. The ? will appear whenever there is a difference in content while the metadata is exactly the same.

  Since files with unchanged metadata are normally not read again when creating a backup, the detection is only effective when the right-hand side of the diff has been created with backup --force.

  #805 #4526

• Enhancement #828: Improve features of the repair packs command

  The repair packs command has been improved to also be able to process truncated pack files. The check and check --read-data command will provide instructions on using the command if necessary to repair a repository. See the guide at https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/stable/077_troubleshooting.html for further instructions.

  #828 #4644 #4882

• Enhancement #1786: Support repositories with empty password

  Restic previously required a password to create or operate on repositories. Using the new option --insecure-no-password it is now possible to disable this requirement. Restic will not prompt for a password when using this option.

  For security reasons, the option must always be specified when operating on repositories with an empty password, and specifying --insecure-no-password while also passing a password to restic via a CLI option or environment variable results in an error.

  The init and copy commands add the related --from-insecure-no-password option, which applies to the source repository. The key add and key passwd commands add the --new-insecure-no-password option to add or set an empty password.

  #1786 #4326 #4698 #4808

• Enhancement #2348: Add --delete option to restore command

  The restore command now supports a --delete option that allows removing files and directories from the target directory that do not exist in the snapshot. This option also allows files in the snapshot to replace non-empty directories having the same name.

  To check that only expected files are deleted, add the --dry-run --verbose=2 options.

  #2348 #4881

• Enhancement #3067: Add extended options to configure Windows Shadow Copy Service

  Previous, restic always used a 120 seconds timeout and unconditionally created VSS snapshots for all volume mount points on disk. This behavior can now be fine-tuned by the following new extended options (available only on Windows):

  • -o vss.timeout: Time that VSS can spend creating snapshot before timing out (default: 120s)
  • -o vss.exclude-all-mount-points: Exclude mountpoints from snapshotting on all volumes (default: false)
  • -o vss.exclude-volumes: Semicolon separated list of volumes to exclude from snapshotting
  • -o vss.provider: VSS provider identifier which will be used for snapshotting

  For example, change VSS timeout to five minutes and disable snapshotting of mount points on all volumes:

  Restic backup --use-fs-snapshot -o vss.timeout=5m -o vss.exclude-all-mount-points=true

  Exclude drive d:, mount point c:\mnt and a specific volume from snapshotting:

  Restic backup --use-fs-snapshot -o vss.exclude-volumes="d:;c:\mnt;\?\Volume{e2e0315d-9066-4f97-8343-eb5659b35762}"

  Uses 'Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider 1.0' instead of the default provider:

  Restic backup --use-fs-snapshot -o vss.provider={b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}

  #3067

• Enhancement #3406: Improve dump performance for large files

  The dump command now retrieves the data chunks for a file in parallel. This improves the download performance by up to as many times as the configured number of parallel backend connections.

  #3406 #4796

• Enhancement #3806: Optimize and make prune command resumable

  Previously, if the prune command was interrupted, a later prune run would start repacking pack files from the start, as prune did not update the index while repacking.

  The prune command now supports resuming interrupted prune runs. The update of the repository index has also been optimized to use less memory and only rewrite parts of the index that have changed.

  #3806 #4812

• Enhancement #4006: (alpha) Store deviceID only for hardlinks

  Set RESTIC_FEATURES=device-id-for-hardlinks to enable this alpha feature. The feature flag will be removed after repository format version 3 becomes available or be replaced with a different solution.

  When creating backups from a filesystem snapshot, for example created using BTRFS subvolumes, the deviceID of the filesystem changes compared to previous snapshots. This prevented restic from deduplicating the directory metadata of a snapshot.

  When this alpha feature is enabled, the deviceID is only stored for hardlinks, which significantly reduces the metadata duplication for most backups.

  #4006

• Enhancement #4048: Add support for FUSE-T with mount on macOS

  The restic mount command now supports creating FUSE mounts using FUSE-T on macOS.

  #4048 #4825

• Enhancement #4251: Support reading backup from a command's standard output

  The backup command now supports the --stdin-from-command option. When using this option, the arguments to backup are interpreted as a command instead of paths to back up. backup then executes the given command and stores the standard output from it in the backup, similar to the what the --stdin option does. This also enables restic to verify that the command completes with exit code zero. A non-zero exit code causes the backup to fail.

  Note that the --stdin option does not have to be specified at the same time, and that the --stdin-filename option also applies to --stdin-from-command.

  Example: restic backup --stdin-from-command --stdin-filename dump.sql mysqldump [...]

  #4251 #4410

• Enhancement #4287: Support connection to rest-server using unix socket

  Restic now supports using a unix socket to connect to a rest-server version 0.13.0 or later. This allows running restic as follows:

  rest-server --listen unix:/tmp/rest.socket --data /path/to/data &
  restic -r rest:http+unix:///tmp/rest.socket:/my_backup_repo/ [...]
  

  #4287 #4655

• Enhancement #4354: Significantly reduce prune memory usage

  The prune command has been optimized to use up to 60% less memory. The memory usage should now be roughly similar to creating a backup.

  #4354 #4812

• Enhancement #4437: Make check command create non-existent cache directory

  Previously, if a custom cache directory was specified for the check command, but the directory did not exist, check continued with the cache disabled.

  The check command now attempts to create the cache directory before initializing the cache.

  #4437 #4805 #4883

• Enhancement #4472: Support AWS Assume Role for S3 backend

  Previously only credentials discovered via the Minio discovery methods were used to authenticate.

  However, there are many circumstances where the discovered credentials have lower permissions and need to assume a specific role. This is now possible using the following new environment variables:

  • RESTIC_AWS_ASSUME_ROLE_ARN
  • RESTIC_AWS_ASSUME_ROLE_SESSION_NAME
  • RESTIC_AWS_ASSUME_ROLE_EXTERNAL_ID
  • RESTIC_AWS_ASSUME_ROLE_REGION (defaults to us-east-1)
  • RESTIC_AWS_ASSUME_ROLE_POLICY
  • RESTIC_AWS_ASSUME_ROLE_STS_ENDPOINT

  #4472 #4474

• Enhancement #4547: Add --json option to version command

  Restic now supports outputting restic version along with the Go version, OS and architecture used to build restic in JSON format using version --json.

  #4547 #4553

• Enhancement #4549: Add --ncdu option to ls command

  NCDU (NCurses Disk Usage) is a tool to analyse disk usage of directories. It has an option to save a directory tree and analyse it later.

  The ls command now supports outputting snapshot information in the NCDU format using the --ncdu option. Example usage: restic ls latest --ncdu | ncdu -f -

  #4549 #4550 #4911

• Enhancement #4573: Support rewriting host and time metadata in snapshots

  The rewrite command now supports rewriting the host and/or time metadata of a snapshot using the new --new-host and --new-time options.

  #4573

• Enhancement #4583: Ignore s3.storage-class archive tiers for metadata

  Restic used to store all files on S3 using the specified s3.storage-class.

  Now, restic will only use non-archive storage tiers for metadata, to avoid problems when accessing a repository. To restore any data, it is still necessary to manually warm up the required data beforehand.

  NOTE: There is no official cold storage support in restic, use this option at your own risk.

  #4583 #4584

• Enhancement #4590: Speed up mount command's error detection

  The mount command now checks for the existence of the mountpoint before opening the repository, leading to quicker error detection.

  #4590

• Enhancement #4601: Add support for feature flags

  Restic now supports feature flags that can be used to enable and disable experimental features. The flags can be set using the environment variable RESTIC_FEATURES. To get a list of currently supported feature flags, use the features command.

  #4601 #4666

• Enhancement #4611: Back up more file metadata on Windows

  Previously, restic did not back up all common Windows-specific metadata.

  Restic now stores file creation time and file attributes like the hidden, read-only and encrypted flags when backing up files and folders on Windows.

  #4611

• Enhancement #4664: Make ls use message_type field in JSON output

  The ls command was the only restic command that used the struct_type field in its JSON output format to specify the message type.

  The JSON output of the ls command now also includes the message_type field, which is consistent with other commands. The struct_type field is still included, but now deprecated.

  #4664

• Enhancement #4676: Make key command's actions separate sub-commands

  Each of the add, list, remove and passwd actions provided by the key command is now a separate sub-command and have its own documentation which can be invoked using restic key <add|list|remove|passwd> --help.

  #4676 #4685

• Enhancement #4678: Add --target option to the dump command

  Restic dump always printed to the standard output. It now supports specifying a --target file to write its output to.

  #4678 #4682 #4692

• Enhancement #4708: Back up and restore SecurityDescriptors on Windows

  Restic now backs up and restores SecurityDescriptors for files and folders on Windows which includes owner, group, discretionary access control list (DACL) and system access control list (SACL).

  This requires the user to be a member of backup operators or the application must be run as admin. If that is not the case, only the current user's owner, group and DACL will be backed up, and during restore only the DACL of the backed up file will be restored, with the current user's owner and group being set on the restored file.

  #4708

• Enhancement #4733: Allow specifying --host via environment variable

  Restic commands that operate on snapshots, such as restic backup and restic snapshots, support the --host option to specify the hostname for grouping snapshots.

  Such commands now also support specifying the hostname via the environment variable RESTIC_HOST. Note that --host still takes precedence over the environment variable.

  #4733 #4734

• Enhancement #4737: Include snapshot ID in reason field of forget JSON output

  The JSON output of the forget command now includes id and short_id of snapshots in the reason field.

  #4737

• Enhancement #4764: Support forgetting all snapshots

  The forget command now supports the --unsafe-allow-remove-all option, which removes all snapshots in the repository.

  This option must always be combined with a snapshot filter (by host, path or tag). For example, the command forget --tag example --unsafe-allow-remove-all removes all snapshots with the tag "example".

  #4764

• Enhancement #4768: Allow specifying custom User-Agent for outgoing requests

  Restic now supports setting a custom User-Agent for outgoing HTTP requests using the global option --http-user-agent or the RESTIC_HTTP_USER_AGENT environment variable.

  #4768 #4810

• Enhancement #4781: Add restore options to read include/exclude patterns from files

  Restic now supports reading include and exclude patterns from files using the --include-file, --exclude-file, --iinclude-file and --iexclude-file options of the restore command.

  #4781 #4811

• Enhancement #4807: Support Extended Attributes on Windows NTFS

  Restic now backs up and restores Extended Attributes for files and folders on Windows NTFS.

  #4807

• Enhancement #4817: Make overwrite behavior of restore customizable

  The restore command now supports an --overwrite option to configure whether already existing files are overwritten. The overwrite behavior can be configured using the following option values:

  • --overwrite always (default): Always overwrites already existing files. The restore command will verify the existing file content and only restore mismatching parts to minimize downloads. Updates the metadata of all files.
  • --overwrite if-changed: Like always, but speeds up the file content check by assuming that files with matching size and modification time (mtime) are already up to date. In case of a mismatch, the full file content is verified like with always. Updates the metadata of all files.
  • --overwrite if-newer: Like always, but only overwrites existing files when the file in the snapshot has a newer modification time (mtime) than the existing file.
  • --overwrite never: Never overwrites existing files.

  #4817 #200 #407 #2662 #4837 #4838 #4864 #4921

• Enhancement #4839: Add dry-run support to restore command

  The restore command now supports the --dry-run option to perform a dry run. Pass the --verbose=2 option to see which files would remain unchanged, and which would be updated or freshly restored.

  #4839