Scheduling backups¶

django-recovery does not ship a scheduler — it plugs into whatever already runs your periodic work. Two common setups:

Linux crontab¶

Call the management command directly. Use absolute paths (cron runs with a minimal environment) and --noinput for anything that would prompt.

# crontab -e  (as the user that runs Django)

# nightly backup at 02:00
0 2 * * * cd /srv/myapp && /srv/myapp/.venv/bin/python manage.py recovery backup >> /var/log/recovery.log 2>&1

# weekly prune, Mondays at 03:00
0 3 * * 1 cd /srv/myapp && /srv/myapp/.venv/bin/python manage.py recovery prune --noinput >> /var/log/recovery.log 2>&1

Cron's PATH is usually just /usr/bin:/bin — if restic or pg_dump live elsewhere, set it at the top of the crontab:

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin

Celery¶

The service layer is plain functions, so tasks are thin wrappers. In your project:

# myapp/tasks.py
from celery import shared_task

from django_recovery import services


@shared_task
def recovery_backup():
    return services.run_backup()   # {"default": "ok", "media": "ok"}


@shared_task
def recovery_prune():
    services.run_prune()

# settings.py
from celery.schedules import crontab

CELERY_BEAT_SCHEDULE = {
    "recovery-backup": {
        "task": "myapp.tasks.recovery_backup",
        "schedule": crontab(hour=2, minute=0),
    },
    "recovery-prune": {
        "task": "myapp.tasks.recovery_prune",
        "schedule": crontab(hour=3, minute=0, day_of_week=1),
    },
}

Configuration comes from settings.RECOVERY as everywhere else — the tasks need nothing extra.

Notes for both¶

The process running the schedule (cron job, celery worker) needs restic and the database client tools on its PATH, plus RESTIC_PASSWORD if you source the password from the environment.
Overlapping operations are safe: restic locks the repository. Set TUNING: {"retry_lock": "5m"} so a second operation waits instead of failing.
Workers on a different host than the web app? Set RECOVERY["HOST"] so snapshots stay in one series and retention grouping works as expected.