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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

Quickstart:

    repo=/mnt/mybackupdrive/somefolder
    restic init -r $repo
    restic backup /my/files -r $repo
    restic mount /mnt/backedup -r $repo
    cp -r /mnt/backedup/snapshots/latest/accidentally-removed-directory ~/restored

Where the repository can also be sftp or various other things.

There are a ton of other commands and options, but to literally just get started, this is all you need for making and restoring data from a backup.

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> unknown commands without context is not a guide

This quickstart assumes some context that not every person starting to use Restic has. It could be improved by offering some more context for each line:

    # RESTIC QUICKSTART FOR LINUX

    # Choose were you want to save your backups

    MYREPO=/mnt/mybackupdrive/somefolder

    # Initialize a new restic repo at your chosen backup location

    restic init -r $MYREPO

    # Backup your files to the newly created repo

    restic backup /my/files -r $MYREPO

    # To restore a backup, first mount the repo

    restic mount /mnt/backedup -r $MYREPO

    # Browse the latest backup at /mnt/backedup/snapshots/latest

    ls -la /mnt/backedup/snapshots/latest

    # Copy the files you want to restore out of the repo

    cp -r /mnt/backedup/snapshots/latest/directory-to-restore ~/restored

> > unknown commands without context is not a guide

Quick start != guide, to me. A guide will guide you through thing at a slow pace, a quick start is the quickest way to get something running/started. And the commands seem fairly self-explanatory, but I could be suffering from the so-called curse of knowledge.

That's fine, but 'quick' can still tell you what you're doing.

Fwiw, I've used restic for a few years, and (still, if perhaps less) agree the docs are not great.

I don't remember really having that issue, though I don't remember the very first use. I think the only time where I remember being a bit confused, was with the 'forget' command, and I would guess that's just because of its nature rather than due to lacking docs. Testing what I thought was correct with --dry-run solved that problem.

Mostly I just use restic --help or restic subcommand --help anyhow, rather than the docs. Perhaps I'm just not doing fancy enough things with it and that's why I didn't run into edge cases yet where it lacks documentation?

Same goes for S3 support, working great. Been using MinIO and SeaweedFS as target, works identical to native AWS.

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