You could do this with the `timeout` command.

`timeout -s SIGINT 1h restic...`

That would let restic run for one hour, and then once the hour elapses send a SIGINT which will stop the process (see https://github.com/restic/restic/blob/a29777f46794ea4e35548f...)

And restic would then resume the backup next time it runs.

[1] https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html#will-restic...

Makes perfect sense. Restic kind-of supports this because you can just kill the client after an hour and, tomorrow, it'll see which objects are there already.

I'm not deep enough into the project to know whether this is like an officially supported use-case, but restic was of course made with the idea that interruptions can happen (your computer can crash) and should be handled safely, and for the deduplication it'll cut files up in a deterministic way and thus (as I understand it) store those chunks in a deterministic place.

Rclone will do exactly what you want, upload to S3 and the --max-duration will stop new transfer from starting after a given duration.

There are also throttle options for bandwidth. I use that combined with Node-Red and a smart plug on my monitors, if monitor power draw exceeds a threshold then the upload throttle is changed via the rclone API.

Ok, that looks like a nice tool. Thanks!

Was just going to suggest rclone as well, but for its easily toggle-able bandwidth limiter. I have slow rural internet; restic backs up locally every night, rclone then syncs it offsite. A systemd timer throttles it during walking hours and lets all 6 mbps rip overnight or when out of town.

Also, Restic has rclone backend!

My internet upload speed is bad so I do want something like that.

I would also like to be able to "stage" a backup: figure out what needs to be transmitted and then create the data files that need to be transmitted without actually immediately transmitting it.

That would allow me to do things like backup my laptop to another computer in my house that can upload the files over my slow connection overnight when my laptop isn't on; and to let me bring the backup files to a place (work/university/library) with a fast connection so large backups don't take days or weeks (especially initial backup).

Take a look at NNCP[0]. Haven't tried it yet but read several articles about it and I am looking forward to finding time to use it seriously.

[0] https://www.complete.org/nncp/

I am using restic to backup my laptop and workstation to my nas. At night rclone syncs the restic repositories to S3. I can restore both from my nas as well as from s3.

On Linux, this can be easily achieved by using RuntimeMaxSec= [1] in the corresponding service unit.

[1] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.ser...

I wonder if you can obtain that behavior with a bash script, but it's boring to write scripts and I do not know if SIGTERM can exit Restic gracely.

If you've ever ctrl+c'd restic, you'll know the message

> signal interrupt received, cleaning up

Thanks! Will try tonight to play with Restic

Restic has support for rate limiting built-in.