CLI
Backup

💾 Backup

crestic backup [--all, -a] [--pipeline, -p <name>] [--job, -j <pipeline/job>] [--dry-run] [--healthcheck]

Performs backup and copy jobs from your configuration. backup supports two execution modes:

  • --pipeline / --all: runs full pipelines (all jobs in pipeline order)
  • --job: runs only explicitly selected jobs

What It Does

The backup command performs a complete backup workflow (all steps are automatic):

  1. Sends start ping to healthcheck service (pipeline runs with --healthcheck and healthcheck_url)
  2. Runs before hooks (if configured)
  3. Checks repository - automatically initializes if not exists
  4. Creates backup - encrypted, deduplicated snapshot
  5. Verifies integrity - runs restic check on repository
  6. Applies retention policy - runs restic forget with forget_options
  7. Runs success or failure hooks based on outcome
  8. Sends success/failure ping to healthcheck service (same conditions as step 1)

Healthcheck pings apply only to --pipeline / --all runs, not --job.

Examples

# All jobs from all pipelines
crestic backup --all
 
# Entire pipeline
crestic backup --pipeline documents-nightly
 
# With healthchecks
crestic backup --pipeline documents-nightly --healthcheck
 
# Specific job (qualified name: pipeline/job)
crestic backup --job documents-nightly/local-backup
 
# Multiple jobs
crestic backup --job documents-nightly/local-backup,photos-weekly/backup
 
# Dry run
crestic backup --all --dry-run

Only one of --all, --pipeline, or --job can be specified at a time.

Automatic Cleanup

If your repository has forget_options configured, old snapshots are automatically removed after each backup:

repositories:
  my-repo:
    forget_options:
      keep-daily: 7
      keep-weekly: 4
      prune: true  # Actually frees disk space

For more options, see Removing backup snapshots (opens in a new tab).

Error Handling

Jobs in a list run sequentially (fail-fast). If one job fails:

  • The error is logged and returned immediately
  • Remaining jobs in the same list are not executed

When running multiple pipelines (--all or several --pipeline values), each pipeline still runs even if a previous pipeline failed; pipeline-level errors are combined at the end.

GeneralCheck