💾 Backup

crestic backup [--all, -a] [--job, -j <name>] [--dry-run]

Performs a backup of all jobs if the -a or --all flag is passed. To only backup some jobs pass one or more -j or --job flags.

The --dry-run flag will do a dry run showing what would have been backed up, but won't touch the actual data.

What It Does

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

1. Sends start ping to healthcheck service (if configured)
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

# All jobs
crestic backup --all
 
# Specific job
crestic backup --job documents
 
# Multiple jobs
crestic backup --job documents,photos
 
# Dry run
crestic backup --all --dry-run

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

When running multiple jobs, each job executes independently. If one job fails:

• The error is logged
• Execution continues with the next job
• Other jobs will still run
• At the end, all errors are collected and returned as a combined error message

This ensures that a failure in one job doesn't prevent other jobs from completing. Each job's success or failure is tracked separately, and healthcheck notifications are sent for each job individually.