Rest Server is a high performance HTTP server that implements restic's REST backend API. It provides secure and efficient way to backup data remotely, using restic backup client.

Rest Server requires Go 1.7 or higher to build. The only tested compiler is the official Go compiler. Building server with gccgo may work, but is not supported.

The required version of restic backup client to use with rest-server is v0.6.1 or higher, due to some changes in the REST backend API and performance improvements.

Run go run build.go, afterwards you'll find the binary in the current directory. You can move it anywhere you want. There's also an example systemd service file included, so you can get it up & running as a proper service in no time. Of course, you can also test it from the command line.

% go run build.go

% ./rest-server --help
Run a REST server for use with restic

Usage:
  rest-server [flags]

Flags:
      --cpuprofile string   write CPU profile to file
      --debug               output debug messages
  -h, --help                help for rest-server
      --listen string       listen address (default ":8000")
      --log string          log HTTP requests in the combined log format
      --path string         data directory (default "/tmp/restic")
      --tls                 turn on TLS support

Alternatively, you can compile and install it in your $GOBIN with a standard go install ./cmd/rest-server. But, beware, you won't have version info built into binary, when compiled that way.

Run docker/build.sh, image name is restic/rest-server:latest.

By default the server persists backup data in /tmp/restic. Start the server with a custom persistence directory:

% rest-server --path /user/home/backup

The server uses an .htpasswd file to specify users. You can create such a file at the root of the persistence directory by executing the following command. In order to append new user to the file, just omit the -c argument.

% htpasswd -s -c .htpasswd username

By default the server uses HTTP protocol. This is not very secure since with Basic Authentication, username and passwords will travel in cleartext in every request. In order to enable TLS support just add the -tls argument and add a private and public key at the root of your persistence directory.

Signed certificate is required by the restic backend, but if you just want to test the feature you can generate unsigned keys with the following commands:

% openssl genrsa -out private_key 2048
% openssl req -new -x509 -key private_key -out public_key -days 365

Rest Server uses exactly the same directory structure as local backend, so you should be able to access it both locally and via HTTP, even simultaneously.

To learn how to use restic backup client with REST backend, please consult restic manual.

docker pull restic/rest-server:latest

By default, image uses authentication. To turn it off, set environment variable DISABLE_AUTHENTICATION to any value.

Persistent data volume is located to /data

docker run --name myserver --publish 80:80 -v /my/data:/data restic/rest-server

It's suggested to set a name to more easily manage users (see next section).

docker exec -it myserver create_user myuser

or

docker exec -it myserver create_user myuser mypassword

docker exec -it myserver delete_user myuser

Compared to the SFTP backend, the REST backend has better performance, especially so if you can skip additional crypto overhead by using plain HTTP transport (restic already properly encrypts all data it sends, so using HTTPS is mostly about authentication).

But, even if you use HTTPS transport, the REST protocol should be faster and more scalable, due to some inefficiencies of the SFTP protocol (everything needs to be transferred in chunks of 32 KiB at most, each packet needs to be acknowledged by the server).

Finally, the Rest Server implementation is really simple and as such could be used on the low-end devices, no problem. Also, in some cases, for example behind corporate firewalls, HTTP/S might be the only protocol allowed. Here too REST backend might be the perfect option for your backup needs.

Contributors are welcome, just open a new issue / pull request.

The BSD 2-Clause License

Copyright © 2015, Bertil Chapuis
Copyright © 2016, Zlatko Čalušić, Alexander Neumann
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