Obsidian Plugin Backup

An incredibly imperfect implementation of a backup tool for my Obsidian dotfiles. It helps me:

• Hardlink plugin customizations (data.json) in any easy-to-backup way
• See where I've drifted between environments by comparing directories

But isn't there a better way?

Oh, absolutely. I looked at the git plugin but I didn't want to figure out how to make it work across separate Obsidian environments. I can also think of at least two better implementations:

1. An Obsidian plugin that handles this all
2. Building this into a compiled utility with a less clumsy argument structure

Setup

Usage

usage: obsidian_plugin_backup.py [-h] [-c] [-l] [-a] -s SOURCE -d DESTINATION

optional arguments:
  -h, --help                                    show this help message and exit
  -c, --compare                                 Compare directories
  -l, --link                                    Create hardlinks
  -a, --archive                                 Archive destination directory
  -s SOURCE, --source SOURCE                    Source directory
  -d DESTINATION, --destination DESTINATION     Destination directory

Step 1: Hard-link Obsidian dotfiles

• Clone https://github.com/mbbroberg/obsidian-dotfile-backup
• Run it once to hard-link the dotfile folder to your home folder

$ python ./obsidian_plugin_backup.py -l -s "TODO_YOURVAULT/.obsidian/" -d "~/obsidian" 

Step 2: Configure backup runner

• Clone https://github.com/mbbroberg/obsidian
• Either manually run ~/obsidian/auto-backup-obsidian.sh or setup a service to run it periodically

Using Launchd

Replace TODO_YOURUSERNAME with your username in the plist file then run:

$ cp com.user.obsidian.backup.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
$ launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.obsidian.backup.plist

Verify it's enabled in System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items

Troubleshooting

1: Double check the existance of log files, hard links, and permissions. You may have to touch the log files to create them or chmod +x the script.

2: Increase the frequency of the backup by replacing 1800 with 60 in ~/obsidian/auto-backup-obsidian.sh

Reload:

launchctl unload -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.obsidian.backup.plist
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.obsidian.backup.plist

Then watch the logs:

tail -f ~/obsidian/backup-error.log ~/obsidian/backup-output.log

Acknowledgement

I only had the patience and time to put this together because I used GitHub Copilot at first and Cody with Claude at other times. I want to thank everyone whose contributed code helped me navigate this problem.