By now, I am using Proton Drive for cloud data storage and Proton Mail as my primary mail service. While I trust Proton with my data, I do not want to rely on them completely. As I have a small server standing around at home, it’s kinda obvious to use it for automatically performing backups of my cloud data.
I try to use systemd services and timers for this, as this makes monitoring and logging quite easy.
This blog post mostly serves as a reminder for me, but maybe it helps someone else as well.
Our backup drive will be mounted at /media/data. All locally stored data (including configuration files) will be saved at /media/data/proton-backups.
Basic Systemd Information
systemd is the de-facto standard for managing services on Linux. For our use-case we will use services and timers. A service is a unit of work that systemd can manage, while a timer is a unit that can trigger a service at specific times.
A service can either be a long-running process or a oneshot process. We will use oneshot processes for our backups, as they are not long-running processes. A oneshot process will run once and then exit. This is useful for backup scripts, as we do not want them to run continuously.
A nice benefit of using systemd units is that you can use the ConditionPathExists and ConditionPathIsMountPoint options to check if a specific path exists or is mounted. This is useful for checking if the backup drive is mounted before running the backup script. In addition, you can use the After option to specify that a service should only run after another service has finished. This is useful for ensuring that the Proton Mail bridge is running before running the mail backup script.
A timer can be triggered at specific times, or at specific intervals. It typically calls one of our oneshot services.
Using systemd also makes checking the status of the services and timers easy. You can use systemctl status <service> to check the status of a service, and systemctl list-timers to check the status of all timers. You can also use journalctl -u <service> to check the logs of a specific service.
Proton Drive
We want to perform a backup of our Proton Drive every day at 4:00 AM. While there is no official Proton Drive client for Linux, we can use rclone to perform the backup.
Basic Setup of Rclone
You have to use the rclone beta for unofficial proton-drive support. If you want to download it, there is a direct link to the lastest version.
Before using it, we need to setup it by calling rclone config. This will create a configuration file in ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf. You can also specify a different location for the config file by using the --config option. See the configuration instructions for proton login. You need to enter username, password and MFA code — I do not like this, but it is what it is.
You can now call the clone process through rclone sync protondrive: /media/data/proton-backups/prton-backup/. I run into rate-limits, but it seems to be able to cope
Let’s make this easier to automate by creating a script that will perform the backup. The script will be stored at /media/data/proton-backups/perform-backup.sh:
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Don’t forget to make the script executable by running chmod +x /media/data/proton-backups/perform-backup.sh.
Systemd Integration for Rclone
Let’s start by creating a systemd service that will run the backup script. The service will be stored at /etc/systemd/system/proton-drive-backup.service:
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It should be pretty straightforward to understand. We check if the backup drive is mounted and if the rclone config file exists. If both conditions are met, we run the backup script.
You can start the service by running systemctl start proton-drive-backup.service. You can check the status of the service by running systemctl status proton-drive-backup.service. You can also check the logs of the service by running journalctl -u proton-drive-backup.service.
And finally let’s add a timer that will run the backup script every day at 4:00 AM. The timer will be stored at /etc/systemd/system/proton-drive-backup.timer:
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You can enable the timer by running systemctl enable --now proton-drive-backup.timer. You can check the status of the timer by running systemctl list-timers --all. You can also check the logs of the timer by running journalctl -u proton-drive-backup.timer.
And that’s it.
Proton Mail
Proton Mail is a bit more complicated, as we need to use the Proton Mail Bridge to access our Proton Mail account via IMAP. The Proton Mail Bridge is a local application that runs on your computer and acts as a bridge between your Proton Mail account and your email client. It allows you to use any email client that supports IMAP and SMTP to access your Proton Mail account.
We will then use offlineimap to perform the backup by syncing the Proton Mailbridge IMAP account with a local maildir.
Basic Setup of Proton Mail Bridge
Let’s start by installing the Proton Mail Bridge. You can download the latest version from the Proton Mail Bridge website. We will also need to install the pass and tmux packages, as we will use them to manage the Proton Mail Bridge process.
Most of this is based upon this github gist but was adapted by me to use tmux and systemd timers.
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Now start protonmail-bridge and login to your Proton Mail account. You will need to enter your username, password, and MFA code. Note the IMAP and SMTP credentials that are displayed in the Proton Mail Bridge application. You will need them later to configure offlineimap.
To automatically start the Proton Mail Bridge, we will create a script that will start the bridge in a detached tmux session. The script will be stored at /media/data/proton-backups/start-protonmail-bridge.sh:
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Don’t forget to make the script executable by running chmod +x /media/data/proton-backups/start-protonmail-bridge.sh.
You can start the script by running ./start-protonmail-bridge.sh start. You can check the status of the script by running ./start-protonmail-bridge.sh status. You can stop the script by running ./start-protonmail-bridge.sh stop.
This feels like a systemd service, doesn’t it? Well, we will create a systemd service that will run the script. The service will be stored at /etc/systemd/system/protonmail-bridge.service:
Systemd Integration for Proton Mail Bridge
As we already have a script that can start and stop the Proton Mail Bridge, we can create a systemd service that will run the script. The service will be stored at /etc/systemd/system/protonmail-bridge.service:
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You can enable this service by running systemctl enable --now protonmail-bridge.service. You can check the status of the service by running systemctl status protonmail-bridge.service. You can also check the logs of the service by running journalctl -u protonmail-bridge.service.
Offline Imap
Now we can use offlineimap to perform the backup. Offlineimap is a command-line tool that allows you to sync your email accounts with a local maildir. It supports IMAP and Gmail, and it can be used to sync your Proton Mail account with a local maildir.
Let’s create a configuration file for offlineimap. The configuration file will be stored at ~/.offlineimaprc (should move this into the backup directory maybe):
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Systemd Integration for offlineimap
Finally, we can create a systemd service that will run offlineimap. The service will be stored at /etc/systemd/system/protonmail-backup.service:
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We are using the Requires and After options to ensure that the Proton Mail Bridge is running before running the offlineimap service. This is important, as offlineimap needs to connect to the Proton Mail Bridge to access your Proton Mail account.
And finally, let’s add a timer that will run the offlineimap service every day at 4:00 AM. The timer will be stored at /etc/systemd/system/protonmail-backup.timer:
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And that’s it. You can enable the timer by running systemctl enable --now protonmail-backup.timer. You can check the status of the timer by running systemctl list-timers --all. You can also check the logs of the timer by running journalctl -u protonmail-backup.timer.