Status / health summary

/bin/status is the quick daily operator view. It is intentionally much lighter than /bin/doctor: it only reads local container state and never calls restic, rclone, hooks, mail, webhooks or repository probes.

Use it for "is this container broadly healthy?" checks:

• release, hostname, timezone and masked repository;
• rendered crontab (or environment-derived preview in one-shot mode);
• enabled / disabled schedule state for backup, check, forget, prune, replicate and rotate_log;
• latest last-*.json files under /var/log;
• age and exit code for scheduled backup, check, forget, prune and replicate runs;
• compact OK / WARN / FAIL verdict.

/bin/health-summary is a symlink alias for the same command.

Quick start

docker exec -ti restic-backup-helper /bin/status

# Same command through the entrypoint dispatcher.
docker run --rm --env-file restic.env \
  marc0janssen/restic-backup-helper:latest \
  status

# Alias, useful when the name reads better in runbooks.
docker exec -ti restic-backup-helper /bin/health-summary

Example text output:

restic-backup-helper status: OK
release:            2.14.1-0.18.1
hostname:           backup-node
time:               2026-05-13 Wed 23:25:00 CEST
repository:         rclone:jottacloud:backups
warnings/failures:  0/0

== Schedules ==
crontab source:     /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root (3 line(s))
  job        state    cron
  backup     enabled  0 */6 * * *
  check      enabled  30 2 * * *
  forget     disabled -
  prune      enabled  0 3 * * 0
  replicate  disabled -
  rotate_log enabled  0 0 * * 6

== Core Job Ages ==
  job        status     exit     age        detail
  backup     ok         0        1h 12m     last exit 0, age 1h 12m
  check      ok         0        20h 3m     last exit 0, age 20h 3m
  forget     disabled   -        -          disabled
  prune      ok         0        3d 4h      last exit 0, age 3d 4h
  replicate  disabled   -        -          disabled

Health rules

Verdict	Meaning
OK	All enabled core jobs have a successful recent JSON summary.
WARN	An enabled core job has no last-*.json yet, looks stale for a simple cron expression, or a non-scheduled helper JSON reports a non-zero exit.
FAIL	An enabled core job (backup, check, forget, prune, replicate) has a non-zero last exit code.

The status command treats helper failures (restore, restore-test, snapshot-export, notify-test, etc.) as warnings, not hard failures, because they are usually operator-triggered rather than cron-driven service health. They are still visible in Recent JSON and findings[].

Staleness is intentionally conservative and only applied when the cron expression is simple enough to understand:

• */N * * * * (every N minutes)
• M */N * * * (every N hours)
• M H * * * (daily)
• M H * * D (weekly-ish)
• M H D * * (monthly-ish)

The warning threshold is three expected intervals plus ten minutes of slack. Custom cron expressions still show age, but do not trigger stale warnings.

JSON mode

docker exec restic-backup-helper /bin/status --json | jq '.verdict, .findings'
docker run --rm --env-file restic.env marc0janssen/restic-backup-helper:latest health-summary --json

Schema: restic-backup-helper.status/1.

Field	Type	Description
schema	string	Constant restic-backup-helper.status/1.
command	string	Constant status.
release / hostname	string	Baked release and container hostname.
generated_at / generated_epoch	string / integer	Generation time in container timezone and Unix epoch.
verdict	string	OK, WARN or FAIL.
warnings / failures	integer	Count of generated findings by severity.
exit_code	integer	0 for OK / WARN, 1 for FAIL.
runtime	object	tz and masked repository.
crontab	object	source, path, line_count.
schedules[]	array	One entry per known schedule (job, enabled, cron, command).
jobs[]	array	Core job health rows (job, enabled, core, status, cron, path, present, exit_code, age_seconds, age_human, finished_at, detail).
recent_json[]	array	One entry per known /var/log/last-*.json (job, path, present, exit_code, age_seconds, age_human).
findings[]	array	Compact {level, message} summary of WARN / FAIL conditions.

Exit codes

Exit	Meaning
0	Verdict is OK or WARN.
1	Verdict is FAIL (at least one enabled core job has a non-zero last exit).
2	Bad CLI usage.

See also

• Diagnostics (doctor) — deeper support bundle with config checks and repository probe.
• Cron list — verbose crontab and schedule explanation.
• JSON summaries — per-worker last-*.json files consumed by /bin/status.