redo-backups

Create live disk/partition backups that are 100% compatible with Redo Rescue, so they can be restored from the official Redo Rescue live CD.

Redo Rescue normally runs offline from its live CD. The goal of this project is to produce the exact same on-disk format (.redo metadata + split, gzip-compressed partclone images) from a running system, driven by a saved configuration — so you can take a backup on demand without rebooting into the live CD, and still restore it with Redo Rescue if disaster strikes.

⚠️ Status: early development. The format and tooling are being built up step by step. Do not rely on this for critical backups yet.

Why

• Take a Redo Rescue-compatible backup of a live machine (primary target: Gentoo, but kept distribution-independent).
• Drive it from a config file under /etc/redo-backups/, runnable manually.
• Keep restores working from the stock Redo Rescue live CD — no custom restore tooling required.

Goals

1. A command that, given a saved profile under /etc/redo-backups/, runs a backup manually.
2. Output byte-format-compatible with Redo Rescue version 4.0.0.
3. Configurable data-consistency strategy for live filesystems (see below).
4. Distribution-independent; relies only on standard tools (partclone, pigz, split, sfdisk, dd, lsblk).

Backup format

The produced backup matches Redo Rescue: a JSON .redo descriptor plus one or more *_<dev>_NNN.img chunks per partition (4 GiB partclone images piped through pigz and split). The format is documented in docs/redo-format.md.

Configuration

Backups are configured under /etc/redo-backups/:

• one profile per file: /etc/redo-backups/<profile>.conf;
• optional per-profile drop-in directory /etc/redo-backups/<profile>.conf.d/*.conf, applied in lexical order, with later files overriding earlier ones and the base profile.

A ready-to-edit profile with every setting documented is provided under examples/etc/redo-backups/.

Consistency strategies

Imaging a live, mounted filesystem can capture an inconsistent state, so the strategy is configurable (consistency = in the profile):

• none — image the device as-is. Fast, no requirements, but not crash-consistent.
• fsfreeze — freeze the partition's filesystem (fsfreeze -f) while imaging, then thaw it. Crash-consistent; briefly blocks writes. Use this for directly-formatted partitions, including btrfs.
• lvm — for an LVM physical-volume partition. See the note below.

Why lvm works the way it does

A backup is only useful if the Redo Rescue live CD can restore it, and Redo Rescue restores at the partition level: it recreates the partition table and writes each per-partition image back to /dev/<part>. It has no concept of logical volumes. Imaging LVs individually (e.g. with LVM snapshots) would produce images Redo Rescue cannot restore.

So for an LVM PV partition, redo-backups keeps the same unit Redo Rescue uses — the whole PV partition, imaged raw — and makes it consistent by freezing every mounted filesystem on the PV's logical volumes for the duration of imaging, then thawing them. The result is crash-consistent and restorable from the live CD. The cost is a full-size raw image (no free-space skipping) and a brief simultaneous write-freeze of those filesystems.

There is intentionally no btrfs-snapshot (a btrfs snapshot is a subvolume, not a block device — use fsfreeze) and no offline/reboot mode (that is just what the Redo Rescue live CD already does).

These strategies are documented in full in docs/redo-format.md and the example configuration.

Quick start

Install the latest release with Go 1.26+ (the binary lands in $(go env GOPATH)/bin, so add that to your PATH):

go install github.com/OrbintSoft/redo-backups/cmd/redo-backup@latest

Or build from a checkout:

go build -o redo-backup ./cmd/redo-backup

Install a profile and run it (imaging needs root):

sudo install -D -m 0644 examples/etc/redo-backups/example.conf /etc/redo-backups/example.conf
sudo editor /etc/redo-backups/example.conf      # set 'dest', pick a consistency strategy
sudo ./redo-backup run example

On success the destination directory contains <id>.redo and the <id>_<dev>_NNN.img chunks, restorable from the Redo Rescue live CD.

Commands

redo-backup list                       # list available profiles
redo-backup show <profile>             # print a profile's resolved config
redo-backup run <profile>              # run the backup
redo-backup run <profile> --dry-run    # preview the plan, touch nothing
redo-backup version | help

Useful flags for run (also available where relevant):

• --config-dir <dir> — use a profile directory other than /etc/redo-backups.
• --dry-run — validate and print the imaging plan without touching disks.
• Per-setting overrides: --dest, --drive, --parts, --id, --notes, --compressor, --split-size, --consistency. These override the profile and are re-validated. Example:

redo-backup run nightly --dest /mnt/usb --consistency fsfreeze --dry-run

Requirements

• Go (to build, or to go install the released binary) — produces a single static binary.
• Runtime tools on the target system: partclone.*, pigz, split, coreutils, util-linux (sfdisk, lsblk, blockdev, findmnt, fsfreeze). The fsfreeze and lvm strategies use fsfreeze; nothing extra beyond util-linux is required.

Sponsoring

If this project is useful to you, please consider supporting its development:

• GitHub Sponsors
• PayPal

This project would not exist without Redo Rescue, whose backup/restore format it implements. Redo Rescue is an independent third-party project (not mine and not managed by me) — please consider supporting it too. Redo Rescue accepts Bitcoin donations at:

1redoitC6r8JhUSrt5sVvF3ZEMj1kFyq2

Licence

EUPL-1.2. © 2026 Stefano Balzarotti (Orbintsoft), with the support of Claude agent AI. See COPYRIGHT.md for the copyright notice.

Acknowledgements

Backup/restore format and command semantics are derived from Redo Rescue (© Zebradots Software, GPLv3), studied for interoperability. This project is an independent, compatible implementation and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Redo Rescue.