How to find out what files have changed?

[lesleyxyz]

Hey guys,

I see on the stats page everyday it adds 150 - 400 MB to my backup repo.
I don't expect this much difference day over day.

This is my retention settings:

Each snapshot (every 4h) indicates 400-900 files changes, which seems a lot to me.
Is there any way I can see what exact files these are so I can track down what's eating up gradually space?
I mean yeah it's only 8GB/month but either way I'd like to understand what's going on.

Thank you all and kind regards,

Lesley

[ngoc-minh-do]

I have the same question

[lesleyxyz]

Hey,

How I solved this by clicking "Run Command" and running e.g.

diff 4402385f a364263d

Where the two last arguments are the backup IDs.
It will then print added/removed/modified files.

For me it was mostly cache that I now excluded (e.g. Plex thumbnails)
However it would still be nice to have a native/visualized option for this (cc: #996)

[mavwolverine]

Can it be added to the UI?
Similar to snapshot browser, show a backup browser. + or green for new files, M or amber/orange for changed files?

Thanks

[edoardo-c]

Personally, I think a restic diff is more than enough. You have no real need to know what files have changed on a daily bases as we are dealing with snapshots. You just restore a point in time regardless of if the file changed or not.

If however you do want to investigate a problem like the one mentioned above, then the Restic CLI is there for you to dig deeper. It's not a bad idea to have a minimal knowlege of the underlying tool.

[mavwolverine]

My 2 cents.
Backrest is a frontend tool for restic. If i am not wrong, the whole idea behind its existence is knowing the underlying tool.
Cloud storage can turn expensive if unmonitored. Having to navigate through each change to get count of files changed, then copying the ids to the current and previous backup, then running the diff command is not as simple as it sounds.

[edoardo-c]

I use Backrest as a backup scheduler for my Mac and a simple front-end for an overview of my backups, but I use Restic daily at work so I guess my requirements are different than many.

Your 2c make sense. ;)