Linux Backup Made Simple: Automate Incremental System Snapshots with Restic

Short summary

Restic is an open-source backup tool providing incremental, encrypted, deduplicated system snapshots without cloud vendor lock-in. This tutorial automates daily Linux backups to USB using Bash that intelligently excludes caches, system directories, and remote mounts like NAS shares. Includes tool comparison and working code.

• •Restic chunks files with AES-256 encryption and deduplication so repeated backups take seconds
• •Bash script auto-detects and excludes caches, remote filesystems, and system directories—initialize once, runs hands-free
• •Supports incremental daily backups, dry-run previews, and full scans in single binary with no daemon or database

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