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backupd

The declarative S3-compatible backup daemon for Linux

backupd lets you define backup plans in a single YAML file - sources, destination, encryption, retention, tags, and hooks - and handles the rest. Incremental by default, encrypted at rest, and scheduled without extra tooling.

Key Features

  • 🚀 Incremental by Default

    Rsync-style delta algorithm uploads only changed blocks, keeping repeated backups cheap on large datasets.

  • 📦 Zero Runtime Dependencies

    A single static Go binary - no agent, no database, no interpreter.

  • 🔐 Encrypted at Rest

    AES-256-GCM encryption with Argon2id key derivation; dedup blocks and archives are stored unreadable without the passphrase.

  • 🗂️ S3-Compatible Storage

    AWS S3, MinIO, DigitalOcean Spaces, Backblaze B2 - anything with an S3 API.

  • 🧩 Multi-Source

    File trees, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, SQLite, Docker volumes, and Kubernetes PVCs in one plan.

  • ⏰ Built-In Scheduling

    Embedded cron daemon, or export native systemd timers and services.

  • 🧹 Automatic Retention

    keep-last, daily, weekly, and monthly policies prune old snapshots for you.

  • 🔔 Hooks

    Pre-backup, post-backup, and on-failure commands for Healthchecks.io pings, notifications, and more.

  • ✅ Verifiable

    Snapshot integrity verification and restore from any snapshot, anytime.

  • 🐢 Rate Limiting

    Per-plan transfer limits keep backups from saturating slow or shared links.

  • 🧪 Check & Dry-Run

    backupd check validates configs; run --dry-run shows exactly what would be uploaded without writing a byte.

When Should I Use backupd?

  • Servers and VPSes: if you need reliable backups of /etc, web roots, application data, or databases on a schedule, backupd replaces ad-hoc cron + tar + scp pipelines.
  • Databases: if you need consistent logical dumps of PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, or SQLite - including the database and its files - in one place.
  • Container workloads: if you run Docker volumes or Kubernetes PVCs and want their contents in the same backup stream as everything else.
  • Offsite storage: if you want backups in S3-compatible object storage (MinIO at home, B2/Spaces/S3 in the cloud) with encryption applied before upload.
  • Notification and monitoring: if you want Healthchecks.io pings, Slack/Discord alerts, or email on every success and failure via hooks.
  • Retention discipline: if you want keep-last + daily + weekly + monthly pruning so backups never silently accumulate unbounded.

Quick Example

# ~/.backupd.yaml
plans:
  - name: server
    schedule: "0 3 * * *"          # every day at 03:00
    sources:
      - type: file
        path: /etc
        exclude: ["*.log", ".cache"]
      - type: database
        adapter: postgres
        dsn: "postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb"
    destination:
      type: s3
      bucket: my-backups
      endpoint: s3.amazonaws.com
      region: us-east-1
      access-key: ${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}
      secret-key: ${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}
    encryption:
      passphrase: ${BACKUP_PASSPHRASE}
    retention:
      keep-last: 30
      keep-daily: 7
      keep-weekly: 4

backupd run server                # first run backs everything up
backupd history server            # watch snapshots accumulate
backupd restore server <id> --target /tmp/restore   # restore any snapshot

Next Steps