Restic as backup solution

froggy

I've read a lot here about the problems with Seedvault and I can't get a reliable automatic backup with Seedvault myself. But an OS without a reliable automatic backup is worthless to me.

I've also read here that programming a new backup app would be very time-consuming and it's not clear where the man-power would come from.

But why to programm something completely new?
My suggestion is therefore to integrate Restic (https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/stable/).
I use Restic as backup software for all my private and office computers.
It supports lots of repositories (local systems, SFTP, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Azure, Google Cloud and much more), strong encryption and there is an Android app (https://github.com/lhns/restic-android).
I haven't tested the Android app yet, as it naturally doesn't have access to all the necessary directories under Graphene to realise a complete backup, but that should be possible and not involve too much effort, right?
What do you think?

de0u

froggy Maybe I'm missing things, but the linked documentation does not point to the Restic code, and the GitHub repo does not contain Android code.

I did find an Android Restic client repo on GitHub, but the license is GPL, which I believe is a show-stopper for GrapheneOS user-space code.

Please note that I do not speak for the GrapheneOS project.

Carlos-Anso

froggy But why to programm something completely new?
My suggestion is therefore to integrate Restic

AOSP includes its own backup manager service. It is what both seedvault and Google Backup use when they are doing a backup of app data. It is also what is used for modern device to device app data transfers. The kind used when moving to a new device.

Working with this system back service allows android app developers to indicate what data to backup. Making backups of app data thats encrypted with keys held in the Titan secure enclave would lead to an unhappy future when you restored the backup of that app to another device!

This service is secure and robust. Implementing another secure way to backup app data and keeping it working as android changes in the future would be massive undertaking.

Theres an overview and some diagrams of how things work at https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/data/testingbackup

froggy

de0u
Sorry for the missing link. The Restic code is here:
https://github.com/restic/restic
The license of Restic is "BSD 2-Clause License", not sure if this is ok for GrapheneOS (but "BSD" sound good for me)
The Android-App is AFAIK just a UI, using Restic in the background.
Maybe this UI has to be reprogrammed, but that should still be less work than programming a complete backup app,
and it could be a good idea to ask the author of the Android-App for special permissions.

(sorry I'm not a specialist for those license things, just a Graphene user looking for a good backup solution...)

de0u

froggy The Android-App is AFAIK just a UI, using Restic in the background.

Maybe, but if so the main Restic build instructions should include building for Android. Do they?

froggy

Why? It should be part of the underlying Linux, shouldn't it?

de0u

froggy I looked into this a bit more. Android does use a Linux kernel, but the large majority of what's outside of the kernel is not like a regular Linux distribution. Meanwhile, Restic is written in Go, which is not a language widely used on Android systems. The restic-android project uses an emulation layer to bridge the gap between a regular Linux program and an Android system.

Overall I doubt the GrapheneOS developers are going to give system privileges to a backup application written in Go and running in an emulation layer, regardless of the licensing of the GUI front-end app. I could be wrong, of course.

froggy

de0u
So let's hope the GrapheneOS developers make some comments here...

Geert

froggy
I really hope the developers start focusing on this issue.
A backup solution is much needed.
Users with older pixel models who upgrade to a new phone need to spend lots of time to manually install all their apps on the new device.
At some point every GOS user will be in this situation so it's something the whole community would benefit from

froggy

Carlos-Anso
I understand your point, but Google Backup is of course no solution (thats why I use GOS ;-)
You write "This service is secure and robust" but from what I read here in different topics, Seedvault may be secure but it's not robust in any way. I try backup by Seedvault via USB, Nextcloud, Davx5 and neither works reliable.
The developers of GOS tell that developing her own Backup solution is too time consuming
and there is no man power for this in the moment.
This was the reason for my suggestion to impement something existing and work proofed...

de0u

froggy You write "This service is secure and robust" but from what I read here in different topics, Seedvault may be secure but it's not robust in any way.

I believe Carlos-Anso was referring to the lower-level service layer that both SeedVault and Google's cloud backup rely on. If Restic is not using that (which it doesn't seem to be?), that could lead to robustness issues.

de0u

Geert A backup solution is much needed.

Agreed!

Have you had a chance to try the latest SeedVault update? I have not.

Geert

de0u
Me neither
Not sure if it is worth trying