OtoClone

An automatic backup and sync utility that watches directories. It listens to filesystem events on these directories and copies their content to remote destinations. A remote destination can be a folder on the local filesystem, a network drive mounted on the filesystem, or a bucket on a cloud storage provider. See the list of supported providers here.

Compatibility

Linux

Dependencies

• rclone
• inotify-tools

Installation

The only repository supported for now is the AUR. To install otoclone on Arch Linux, use any AUR helper of your choice. Example with yay:

yay -S otoclone

Configuration

1. Make sure inotify-tools is installed

2. Install rclone. To verify if it's installed, run rclone --version

3. Configure your remotes (backup destinations) in rclone by running rclone config. For more details on how to install and configure rclone check out their website.

4. Configure Otoclone with the command otoclone config. This will create a configuration file called config.yml in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/otoclone. (or in $HOME/.config/otoclone if you don't have $XDG_CONFIG_HOME set)

Configuration File Details

The configuration file has the following structure:

config.yml
----------

folders:
  documents:
    path: /home/jim/documents
    strategy: sync
    remotes:
      - name: Dropbox
        bucket: documents
      - name: OneDrive
        bucket: docs
      - name: S3
        bucket: Documents
    ignoreList:
      - ignore-me.txt
    excludePattern: "*.jpg"

  photos:
    path: /home/jim/photos
    strategy: copy
    remotes:
      - name: GoogleDrive
        bucket: Pix

Field	Required?	Description	Example
path	Yes	The path of the folder to watch	home/jim/documents
strategy	Yes	The backup strategy to use. Currently there are 2 supported strategies: copy and sync	copy
remotes	Yes	The remote destination to transfer data to. Two fields are required for the remote: - name: the name of the remote as defined in rclone. To list configured remotes, run rclone listremotes - bucket: the path of the destination folder on the remote.	name: Dropbox bucket: backup/docs
ignoreList	No	A list of files whose filesystem events should be ignored. These files are not ignored during backup however.	file1.lock
excludePattern	No	The pattern to exclude based on file globs as used by the Unix shell. For more details see rclone's documentation.	*.jpg

Usage

To start watching folders defined in the configuration for changes run: otoclone

To execute a one time backup of a single folder run:

otoclone backup -f MY_FOLDER

Omitting the -f flag will backup all folders defined in the configuration

For a list of all available commands and flags run: otoclone -h

Build from source

Download the source code and build the binary

git clone https://github.com/ilyessbachiri/otoclone
cd otoclone/
go build -o otoclone

Install the binary

Add the binary to /usr/local/bin

sudo mv otoclone /usr/local/bin

If you don't have root privileges or you choose not to touch /usr/local/bin, you can copy the binary into ~/.local/bin/. If this is your case, make sure ~/.local/bin is part of your $PATH env variable.

Keep Alive

systemd can be used on Linux to run otoclone as a service on boot and restart it if it ever fails. Here's an example of how to accomplish this.

1. Add a systemd service file to manage otoclone under /etc/systemd/system/. You can name it otoclone.service for example.

   otoclone.service
   ----------------
   
   [Unit]
   Description=Automatic backup
   After=network.target
   
   [Service]
   Type=simple
   # Another Type: forking
   User=jim
   WorkingDirectory=/home/jim
   ExecStart=otoclone
   Restart=on-failure
   # Other restart options: always, on-abort, etc
   
   # The install section is needed to use
   # `systemctl enable` to start on boot
   # For a user service that you want to enable
   # and start automatically, use `default.target`
   # For system level services, use `multi-user.target`
   [Install]
   WantedBy=default.target
   

2. Enable the service using: systemctl enable otoclone

3. Start the service using: systemctl start otoclone

If everything is configured properly you should see the otoclone service active when you run: systemctl status otoclone

Like any other systemd service the logs can be found in journalclt:

journalctl -u otoclone