Setup the scheduler to run backups every day

Last reviewed: 2025-09-02 / Plakar v1.0.3

Plakar includes a scheduler that can run backups as well as tasks like restoring files, synchronizing Kloset stores, and verifying backup integrity.

In this tutorial, we will show how to set up the scheduler to run backups every day.

Requirements

We assume you have an existing Kloset store at /var/backups. To create it, use:

1plakar at /var/backups create

Configuration

Create a configuration for your Kloset store. This ensures the scheduler can later retrieve the store passphrase:

1plakar store add mybackups /var/backups passphrase=mysuperpassphrase

Create the configuration file scheduler.yaml for the scheduler in your current directory with the following content:

1agent:
2  tasks:
3    - name: backup Plakar source code
4      repository: "@mybackups"
5
6      backup:
7        path: /Users/niluje/dev/plakar/plakar
8        interval: 24h
9        check: true

This configuration file defines a task for the Plakar scheduler, where:

• name is the task label, displayed in the UI.
• repository references the Kloset store. The syntax @mystore corresponds to the store previously configured with plakar store add mystore.
• backup is the task type. In this case, we back up the Plakar source code at the given path every 24 hours.
• check is to run a check after the backup is created to ensure the backup is valid.

Running the scheduler

Start the scheduler

1plakar scheduler start -tasks ./scheduler.yaml

The scheduler is started in the background. To stop it, use:

1plakar scheduler stop