Like many other user of LXD, I have been making backup of my container using lxd image technic, now I am converting to lxc export.
I was looking at the api backup doc and also at the backup code inside lxdMosaic, and was wandering how could I do the same from the command line?, or is there some config setting I could use ?
I don’t really understand what you mean.
lxc export is one option for command line.
Another idea would be to use snapshots, with lxc snapshot.
Afaik you can also automate backups with snapshots.
Or do you mean something else?
Sorry English is not my first language.
Yes I do have automatique snapshot running on my server and auto expired.
I do make use of lxc export every night, lxc copy also.
My question was regarding the /1.0/instances/<name>/backups API.
This is someting that I try to understand and would like to use, I do not want to use third party tools “ex: LxdMosaic backup” if I do not know how it works.
best
Backups are fun!
I mean you mention LXDMosaic 
but can I ask why you aren’t happy with the LXDMosaic solution?
To simplify LXDMosaic;
You just want to write cron jobs to hit POST /1.0/INSTANCE/backups then GET /1.0/INSTANCE/backups/BACKUP_NAME/export then DELETE /1.0/INSTANCE/backups/BACKUP_NAME
Hi Turtle, No I am very happy with LXDMosaic, been testing it since early version 
As an old sysadmin, I need to understand under the hood how it work.
Also I love to use bash stuff for automation.
I have been fight to use lxc query -X post to mimic what you do in LXDMosaic. whitout success
lxc query -X POST { “name”: “backup0”, “expiry”: 3600, “instance_only”: true, “optimized_storage”: true } /1.0/containers/one/backups/backup0
Description:
Send a raw query to LXD
Usage:
lxc query [:] [flags]
Examples:
lxc query -X DELETE --wait /1.0/instances/c1
Delete local instance “c1”.
Flags:
-d, --data Input data
–raw Print the raw response
-X, --request Action (defaults to GET) (default “GET”)
–wait Wait for the operation to complete
Global Flags:
–debug Show all debug messages
–force-local Force using the local unix socket
-h, --help Print help
–project string Override the source project
-q, --quiet Don’t show progress information
-v, --verbose Show all information messages
–version Print version number
Error: Invalid number of arguments
Oh okay,
well I guess its this
lxc query -X POST --data '{"name": "wow"}' /1.0/instances/INSTANCE_NAME/backups
You have to wait for the backup operation to finish here
lxc query /1.0/instances/INSTANCE_NAME/backups/wow/export > my_backup.tar.gz
lxc query -X DELETE /1.0/instances/INSTANCE_NAME/backups/wow
Tanks a Lot, I am doing a backup now…
Funny how simple thing cant get so bizzare without documentation !!!
I will try to implement some lxc alias for this !
Also will come back to you concerning the usage of storage.backups_volume in lxdMosaic
lxc config show
config:
core.https_address: ‘[::]:8443’
core.trust_password: true
storage.backups_volume: bkp_pool/bkp_vol
Best regard
We’ve not yet had much use for exposing all the capabilities of the backups API in the CLI. Instead we just have lxc export and lxc import which make use of it.
lxc export just creates a new backup, then downloads it, then deletes it, pretty much exactly as you did above through lxc query.