# Restoring from backup

## Restoring from a snapshot

Restoring a snapshot is as easy as it sounds, just use the following command to restore the contents of the latest snapshot to `/tmp/restore-work`:

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo restore 79766175 --target /tmp/restore-work
    enter password for repository:
    restoring <Snapshot of [/home/user/work] at 2015-05-08 21:40:19.884408621 +0200 CEST> to /tmp/restore-work

Use the word `latest` to restore the last backup. You can also combine `latest` with the `--host` and `--path` filters to choose the last backup for a specific host, path or both.

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo restore latest --target /tmp/restore-art --path "/home/art" --host luigi
    enter password for repository:
    restoring <Snapshot of [/home/art] at 2015-05-08 21:45:17.884408621 +0200 CEST> to /tmp/restore-art

Use `--exclude` and `--include` to restrict the restore to a subset of files in the snapshot. For example, to restore a single file:

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo restore 79766175 --target /tmp/restore-work --include /work/foo
    enter password for repository:
    restoring <Snapshot of [/home/user/work] at 2015-05-08 21:40:19.884408621 +0200 CEST> to /tmp/restore-work

This will restore the file `foo` to `/tmp/restore-work/work/foo`.

You can use the command `restic ls latest` or `restic find foo` to find the path to the file within the snapshot. This path you can then pass to `--include` in verbatim to only restore the single file or directory.

There are case insensitive variants of `--exclude` and `--include` called `--iexclude` and `--iinclude`. These options will behave the same way but ignore the casing of paths.

## Restore using mount

Browsing your backup as a regular file system is also very easy. First, create a mount point such as `/mnt/restic` and then use the following command to serve the repository with FUSE:

    $ mkdir /mnt/restic
    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo mount /mnt/restic
    enter password for repository:
    Now serving /srv/restic-repo at /mnt/restic
    When finished, quit with Ctrl-c or umount the mountpoint.

Mounting repositories via FUSE is only possible on Linux, macOS and FreeBSD. On Linux, the `fuse` kernel module needs to be loaded and the `fusermount` command needs to be in the `PATH`. On macOS, you need FUSE for macOS. On FreeBSD, you may need to install FUSE and load the kernel module (`kldload fuse`).

Restic supports storage and preservation of hard links. However, since hard links exist in the scope of a filesystem by definition, restoring hard links from a fuse mount should be done by a program that preserves hard links. A program that does so is `rsync`, used with the option –hard-links.

## Printing files to stdout

Sometimes it’s helpful to print files to stdout so that other programs can read the data directly. This can be achieved by using the dump command, like this:

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo dump latest production.sql | mysql

If you have saved multiple different things into the same repo, the `latest` snapshot may not be the right one. For example, consider the following snapshots in a repo:

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo snapshots
    ID        Date                 Host        Tags        Directory
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    562bfc5e  2018-07-14 20:18:01  mopped                  /home/user/file1
    bbacb625  2018-07-14 20:18:07  mopped                  /home/other/work
    e922c858  2018-07-14 20:18:10  mopped                  /home/other/work
    098db9d5  2018-07-14 20:18:13  mopped                  /production.sql
    b62f46ec  2018-07-14 20:18:16  mopped                  /home/user/file1
    1541acae  2018-07-14 20:18:18  mopped                  /home/other/work
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Here, restic would resolve `latest` to the snapshot `1541acae`, which does not contain the file we’d like to print at all (`production.sql`). In this case, you can pass restic the snapshot ID of the snapshot you like to restore:

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo dump 098db9d5 production.sql | mysql

Or you can pass restic a path that should be used for selecting the latest snapshot. The path must match the patch printed in the “Directory” column, e.g.:

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo dump --path /production.sql latest production.sql | mysql

It is also possible to `dump` the contents of a whole folder structure to stdout. To retain the information about the files and folders Restic will output the contents in the tar (default) or zip format:

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo dump latest /home/other/work > restore.tar

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo dump -a zip latest /home/other/work > restore.zip