The post explain how to simply use plakar to securely backup your files on a remote server:

• remotes files are encrypted: you can backup on your cloud server (OVH, etc..)
• remote files are snapshoted: backups are quick and files are dedupplicated

Ref: https://plakar.io/docs/v1.0.2/quickstart/ Src: https://github.com/PlakarKorp/plakar

Prerequisite

• plakar, of course (brew, apt-get, .. or local compilation)
• a remote host with ssh access which allows sftp

Let say that:

• your remote host is backups.company.com
• your remote account is user
• your remote container is /home/user/backups
• your local files are located at $HOME/Documents

Backup process

Creating the remote container

plakar at sftp://user@backups.company.com/home/user/backups create

• you ssh password will be requested first (unless you launched ssh-agent)
• a (long and entropic) encryption key will also be requested

Backuping your files

This command will performe the backup:

plakar at sftp://user@backups.company.com/home/user/backups backup $HOME/Documents

Then you run this command for the first time, an error message will appear, asking you to start plakar agent.

You may decide:

• to run plakar agent
• to use the backup command with the -no-agent flag

Listing all snapshots

plakar at sftp://user@backups.company.com/home/user/backups ls

2025-08-05T07:50:54Z   9e75730e    3.9 GB        6s /Users/user/Documents
2025-08-04T14:16:01Z   d2b5a123    3.9 GB        7s /Users/user/Documents
2025-08-04T14:11:49Z   ae459cf7    3.9 GB        7s /Users/user/Documents
2025-08-04T13:58:21Z   a5958ffa    3.9 GB        6s /Users/user/Documents
2025-08-04T13:49:31Z   5d350cda    3.9 GB        6s /Users/user/Documents

Removing a snapshot

plakar at sftp://user@backups.company.com/home/user/backups rm 5d350cda

Starting a management GUI

A web GUI is also available which allows all maintenance operations

plakar at sftp://user@backups.company.com/home/user/backups ui

this will open your prefered web broser on a local socket:

Automatic backup on macOSX

You can automatize you backups using macOSX features:

• user launch agent
• storing the encryption key in a local file (eg: ~/.ssh/plakar)

Simply create the ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.company.plakar.plist containing:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.company.plakar</string>
    <key>LowPriorityIO</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Nice</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
      <array>
        <string>/opt/homebrew/bin/plakar</string>
        <string>-no-agent</string>
        <string>-keyfile</string>
        <string>/Users/user/.ssh/plakar</string>
        <string>at</string>
        <string>sftp://user@backups.company.com/home/user/backups</string>
        <string>backup</string>
        <string>/Users/user/Documents</string>
        </array>
      <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>7200</integer>
  </dict>
</plist>

Load this agent, and verify//start it for the first time:

cd ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load com.company.plakar.plist
launchctl list | grep plakar
launchctl start com.company.plakar

Remark: if you want a quicker backup, you need to start the plakar agent (and remove the -no-agent argument of this command. I advice you to write a small shell script to to this, and invoke it from the plist file.

#!/bin/bash
#
# my own backup: (using https://plakar.io/docs/v1.0.2/quickstart/)
#

set -euo pipefail

# Configuration variables at the top
PLAKAR="/opt/homebrew/bin/plakar"
KEY="$HOME/.ssh/plakar"
LOCAL="$HOME/Documents"
DEST="sftp://user@backups.company.com/home/user/backups

if ! pgrep -f "$PLAKAR.*agent" >/dev/null; then
    "$PLAKAR" -quiet agent &
    sleep 1
fi

exec $PLAKAR -keyfile "$KEY" at "$DEST" backup "$LOCAL"