My recommendation is to put all of the variables in an environment file, and use systemd’s EnvironmentFile (in [Service] to point to it.

One of my backup service files (I back up to disks and cloud) looks like this:

[Unit]
Description=Backup to MyUsbDrive
Requires=media-MyUsbDrive.mount
After=media-MyUsbDrive.mount

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/etc/backup/environment
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/restic backup --tag=prefailure-2 --files-from ${FILES} --exclude-file ${EXCLUDES} --one-file-system

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.timer

FILES is a file containing files and directories to be backed up, and is defined in the environment file; so is EXCLUDES, but you could simply point restic at the directory you want to back up instead.

My environment file looks essentially like

RESTIC_REPOSITORY=/mnt/MyUsbDrive/backup
RESTIC_PASSWORD=blahblahblah
KEEP_DAILY=7
KEEP_MONTHLY=3
KEEP_YEARLY=2
EXCLUDES=/etc/backup/excludes
FILES=/etc/backup/files

If you’re having trouble, start by looking at how you’re passing in the password, and whether it’s quoted properly. It’s been a couple of years since I had this issue, but at one point I know I had spaces in a passphrase and had quoted the variable, and the quotes were getting passed in verbatim.

My VPS backups are more complex and get their passwords from a keystore, but for my desktop I keep it simple.

fedoramagazine.org/automate-backups-with-restic-a…

That’s the guide I followed to automate my backups.

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I used this. If you get stuck, try it out. Or check the code for ideas.

Don’t do that. Use resticprofile.

Are you using B2 or S3? Setting both might be causing it to get confused. The bucket name needs to be appended to the end of the S3 or B2 URL like “s3:b2.backblaze.com/<bucket_name>” inside the RESTIC_REPOSITORY variable

Have you tried setting up rclone for cloud access and then using restic with -r “rclone:my_aws:path/to/backup”?

The problem seems to be that when you run restic with systemctl start, it passen on your user environment including the information of where your rclone.conf lies. When the systemd service runs on its own it doesn’t have this. You need to either tell restic the path to your rclone config or set the home environment such that the systemd service checks the right location.

# /etc/systemd/system/restic-backup.service

[Unit]
Description=Generate a restic backup snapshot
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
WorkingDirectory=/
EnvironmentFile=/etc/restic-env
PassEnvironment=AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY RESTIC_REPOSITORY RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE
Environment=XDG_CACHE_HOME=/var/cache
ExecStart=/usr/bin/restic backup -r s3:https://s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com/XXXBUCKETNAMEXXX /home/XXXX /etc /media/XXXX/Storage --tag auto
ExecStart=/usr/bin/restic forget --prune --keep-hourly 6 --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --keep-monthly 6 --tag auto
ExecStart=/usr/bin/restic check --read-data

Nice=19
IOSchedulingClass=best-effort 
IOSchedulingPriority=7
TimeoutSec=3600
Restart=no

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

# /etc/restic-env

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=004XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=K00XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=s3:s3.us-west-004.backblazeb2.com
export RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE=/etc/restic-password

DEBUG_LOG=restic.log