Healthchecks integration

[Zottelchen]

Hi,
I have a feature request: An Integration of Healthchecks. There is a hosted version, but it can also be selfhosted. It should do the following things:

1. Webhook when starting a location
2. Webhook when finishing a location, including status (or success/fail) as well as a (truncated?) log.

Suggested config:

locations:
  my-location-name:
    from: path/to/backup
    to: name-of-backend
    healthcheck: <uuid> (assume hc-ping.com) OR <url> (for selfhosting)

For comparison, here is a shell script I currently use:

HEALTHPING="https://hc-ping.com/<uuid>"
curl -fsS -m 10 --retry 5 -o /dev/null ${HEALTHPING}/start
LOG=$(restic [or other programs] 2>&1)
curl -fsS -m 10 --retry 5 --data-raw "$LOG" -o /dev/null ${HEALTHPING}/$?

The benefit of having that directly integrated here is that it is one thing less to break. Or in a Windows case, one thing less to properly install [curl] as well as not having to fight with shitty Windows batch syntax just to set up a backup for my moms pictures (especially once #68 is merged).

[cupcakearmy]

Hey there,

Have you tried hooks? https://autorestic.vercel.app/location/hooks

Adding another option to the config should only be done if it's a generic one. Is there any spec for agnostic healthchecks?

But in general I'd say this perfect for hooks, which already solve this functionality

[olofvndrhr]

Hey, i even have a working example which i personally use.

This tells healthchecks when you started and when you finished, even with the autorestic location.
And if it fails it will trigger a fail, with the /fail endpoint of healthchecks.
With this example you even know how long your backup took.

extras:
  default_options: &default_opts
    hooks:
      before:
        - 'curl -m 10 --retry 5 -X POST -H "Content-Type: text/plain" --data "Starting backup for location: ${AUTORESTIC_LOCATION}" https://<healthchecks-url>/ping/<uid>/start'
      failure:
        - 'curl -m 10 --retry 5 -X POST -H "Content-Type: text/plain" --data "Backup failed for location: ${AUTORESTIC_LOCATION}" https://<healthchecks-url>/ping/<uid>/fail'
      success:
        - 'curl -m 10 --retry 5 -X POST -H "Content-Type: text/plain" --data "Backup successful for location: ${AUTORESTIC_LOCATION}" https://<healthchecks-url>/ping/<uid>'

And if you set it as a yaml anchor you can reuse the snippet for every location.

locations:
  something:
    from: /somewhere
    to:
      - somewhere-else
    <<: *default_opts

[cupcakearmy]

We can include it inthe docs if you wish :)
They solve the issue without introducting new complexity to the code.

[olofvndrhr]

Yes, if it helps others.
And you can rename the anchor to something that makes more sense for the example :)
Something like:

extras:
  healthchecks: &healthchecks

Or something you find intuitive

[cupcakearmy]

Added. Thanks a lot!

https://autorestic.vercel.app/examples

[Zottelchen]

@cupcakearmy @olofvndrhr

Hey, thanks for this example!

However, I thought it might be nice to have a standard way, so a similar config could be used on Windows and on Linux, without the need to install curl properly on Windows. Currently, curl on Windows is just an alias of Invoke-WebRequest. To make things worse, this a Powerhell-specific alias and does not work anywhere else.

[cupcakearmy]

While there is a PR I have little plans to support windows as it will generate an absurd amount of issues which I can't debug. (Don't use/own windows)
But since hooks are generic you can write a script, use whatever functionality is available in windows.
And I don't see a clean generic way to implement this as an option without vendor lock

[ljani]

@Zottelchen: curl is shipped with Windows since Windows 1803. PowerShell Core does not alias curl to Invoke-WebRequest, only the old PowerShell 5 does, but you can get around it by calling curl.exe.