[izacus]

Folks that use restic - how does it handle laptop backups?

That is - handling laptop going to sleep during backup, laptop being on only for shorter periods of time, etc.?

Because I had issues with backup tooling which wouldn't resume if it got interrupted and expected for the machine to always run at certain hour of the day. I had examples where laptops wouldn't backup for months because they were only on for a short 30-60min bursts at the time and the backup tools couldn't handle piece-meal resume.

How does restic handle that?

[calcifer]

I invoke backups from a systemd timer. If the schedule is missed (due to sleep, power off etc.) it runs it at the next earliest opportunity.

[izacus]

How does it handle restart after the machine wakes up again?

[calcifer]

When the machine wakes up, systemd checks the timer's schedule and when it last ran. If one or more runs were missed due to the sleep, it's executed immediately.

[izacus]

On Windows and macOS machines too? How does that work?

[dizhn]

https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/stable/faq.html

It will resume from where it got interrupted. The only exception is the initial backup where it doesn't have a snapshot yet.

[predkambrij]

/etc/anacrontab can solve your use case.