Healthy Backup

Version: 1.3.0

A health-first backup skill for OpenClaw.

Before touching a single file, healthy-backup audits your rig. If anything critical is broken, it aborts with a clear report. No silent snapshots of a broken state.

How it works

1. Health audit — checks required binaries, config integrity, key directories, disk space, encryption readiness, secrets file permissions, and optional rclone remote
2. Hard block — any failing check aborts the backup immediately with a full report
3. Stage — collects files for your chosen tier; secret-bearing paths are always excluded (see Secrets policy)
4. Compress → Encrypt (AES256 GPG) → Save
5. Prune — keeps the last N healthy backups; older archives are deleted
6. Sync (optional) — pushes to your configured rclone remote

Run with --dry-run to execute the full audit and see exactly what would be staged — without writing anything.

Secrets policy (enforced in code)

openclaw.json — scrubbed before staging

openclaw.json is never copied verbatim. Before staging, the script uses jq walk() to replace the value of any field whose name contains password, token, secret, or key with "\x3Credacted>". Config structure and all non-sensitive values are preserved. The live file on disk is never modified.

Recommendation: store your backup password in ~/.openclaw/credentials/backup.key (chmod 600) rather than inline in openclaw.json. The health audit will warn if an inline password is detected.

rsync exclusions — always applied, no config override

The following paths are hard-excluded from rsync at every tier:

~/.openclaw/shared/secrets/
~/.openclaw/credentials/
**/*.key  **/*.pem  **/*.env  **/*.secret  **/.env

Secrets manifest

At all tiers the script reads openclaw-secrets.env to extract variable names only — values are never written. The resulting secrets-manifest.txt lists what environment variables your rig expects, useful for rebuilding on a new machine.

GPG passphrase

Written to a chmod 600 temp file and passed to GPG via --passphrase-file — never on the CLI, never visible in ps. Deleted via trap EXIT on success or failure.

What this script reads

This section lists every file and system call the script makes, so there are no surprises:

No network calls are made by the script itself beyond rclone when explicitly configured.

Default tier: migratable

DEPENDENCIES.md

Generated for migratable and full tiers. By default, only binary versions and OS info are collected. Sensitive system state (crontab, npm globals) requires explicit opt-in:

Even when collectCrontab is enabled, any VAR=VALUE patterns in cron lines are replaced with VAR=\x3CREDACTED> before the file is written.

Setup

1. Run the setup wizard

chmod +x setup.sh healthy-backup.sh verify-backup.sh
bash setup.sh

The wizard will ask about tier, backup location, retention, cloud sync, and optional collectors. It writes config to ~/.openclaw/config/healthy-backup/hb-config.json, creates your encryption key file if needed, runs a dry-run automatically, and optionally installs the cron job — all in one flow.

To reconfigure at any time, just run bash setup.sh again.

2. System dependencies

sudo apt install tar gpg jq rsync        # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install tar gpg jq rsync        # Fedora/RHEL

For rclone (only required when uploadMode = rclone):

# Preferred — package manager:
sudo apt install rclone    # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install rclone    # Fedora/RHEL

# Alternative — official binary. Download and inspect BEFORE running:
curl -fsSL https://rclone.org/install.sh -o rclone-install.sh
cat rclone-install.sh        # review it first
sudo bash rclone-install.sh
# Do NOT pipe curl directly to bash without reviewing the script.

These are OS-level binaries, listed in skill metadata for dependency checking only — not as npm packages.

2. Encryption password (choose one — in priority order)

# Recommended: key file with strict permissions
mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/credentials
echo "your-strong-password" > ~/.openclaw/credentials/backup.key
chmod 600 ~/.openclaw/credentials/backup.key

# Or: environment variable
export BACKUP_PASSWORD="your-strong-password"

# Or: inline in skill config (least preferred — see config section)

The health audit checks that backup.key has permissions 600 and will hard-fail if it does not.

3. Install the script

# Place wherever you keep scripts:
chmod +x /path/to/healthy-backup.sh

# Recommended: test run before scheduling — audits rig and shows what would be staged:
/path/to/healthy-backup.sh --dry-run

4. Schedule with cron (Linux)

crontab -e

Example — daily at 03:00:

0 3 * * * /path/to/healthy-backup.sh >> ~/.openclaw/logs/healthy-backup.log 2>&1

Configuration

All config lives in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json under skills.entries["healthy-backup"].config.

{
  "skills": {
    "entries": {
      "healthy-backup": {
        "config": {
          "backupTier":       "migratable",
          "backupRoot":       "~/openclaw-backups",
          "uploadMode":       "local-only",
          "remoteDest":       "gdrive:openclaw-backups",
          "maxBackups":       5,
          "minDiskMb":        500,
          "collectOllama":    true,
          "collectNpm":       false,
          "collectCrontab":   false
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Do not add a password field here. Although the script scrubs it from the backup copy, the value would still exist in your live openclaw.json on disk. Use ~/.openclaw/credentials/backup.key (chmod 600) instead — it is excluded from staging entirely.

### Full configuration reference

| Key | Env var | Default | Description |
|-----|---------|---------|-------------|
| `backupTier` | `BACKUP_TIER` | `migratable` | `minimal` / `migratable` / `full` |
| `backupRoot` | `BACKUP_ROOT` | `~/openclaw-backups` | Local backup storage directory |
| `uploadMode` | `UPLOAD_MODE` | `local-only` | `local-only` or `rclone` |
| `remoteDest` | `REMOTE_DEST` | _(none)_ | rclone destination e.g. `gdrive:backups` |
| `maxBackups` | `MAX_BACKUPS` | `5` | Healthy backups to retain |
| `minDiskMb` | `MIN_DISK_MB` | `500` | Minimum free disk (MB) required |
| `skillsDir` | `SKILLS_DIR` | `~/.openclaw/skills` | Skills directory |
| `collectOllama` | `COLLECT_OLLAMA` | `true` | Include Ollama model list in DEPENDENCIES.md |
| `collectNpm` | `COLLECT_NPM` | `false` | Include npm globals in DEPENDENCIES.md (opt-in) |
| `collectCrontab` | `COLLECT_CRONTAB` | `false` | Include sanitised crontab in DEPENDENCIES.md (opt-in) |
| `password` | `BACKUP_PASSWORD` | _(none)_ | ⚠ Discouraged — prefer key file; if set, value is scrubbed from backup copy but remains in live config |

**Priority:** Config file → Env var → Auto-detect

---

## Health checks

| Check | Behaviour |
|-------|-----------|
| Required binaries (`tar`, `gpg`, `jq`, `rsync`) | Hard fail |
| `rclone` present (if `uploadMode = rclone`) | Hard fail |
| `openclaw.json` is valid JSON | Hard fail |
| Key directories exist (OpenClaw dir, workspace) | Hard fail |
| Free disk ≥ `minDiskMb` | Hard fail |
| Encryption password available | Hard fail |
| `backup.key` permissions = 600 (if file exists) | Hard fail |
| Secrets file permissions = 600 (if file exists) | Hard fail |
| rclone remote reachable (if `uploadMode = rclone`) | Hard fail |
| Skills dir present | Warn only |
| Ollama models loaded | Warn only |
| No agents in config | Warn only |

---

## Archive contents

config/openclaw.json ← always present config/secrets-manifest.txt ← key names only, no values (migratable+) openclaw/ ← ~/.openclaw minus secrets paths (migratable+) workspace/ ← workspace minus secrets paths (full only) skills/ ← skills minus secrets paths (full only) DEPENDENCIES.md ← system snapshot (migratable+, opt-in fields) HEALTH_REPORT.txt ← full audit log from backup time

---

## Verifying the script

After downloading, verify the script has not been modified:

```bash
sha256sum healthy-backup.sh

Compare the output against the checksum published in the skill's release or provided by the author. The script also prints its own SHA256 on every successful run so you can confirm the installed version matches what ran.

Restore

gpg --batch --passphrase-file /path/to/backup.key \
    --decrypt healthy-backup-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-migratable.tgz.gpg \
  | tar -xzf - -C /restore/target

Security checklist

• backup.key exists and has chmod 600
• openclaw-secrets.env has chmod 600
• Backup root directory is not world-readable
• If using rclone cloud sync: prefer rclone crypt remote for an additional encryption layer
• Tested decryption of at least one archive before relying on backups
• collectCrontab and collectNpm left false unless you specifically need them

Credits

Inspired by and building on:

• simple-backup by VACInc — GPG + rclone pattern, config resolution hierarchy
• claw-backup by vidarbrekke — tier thinking, dependency manifests, restore notes

License

MIT

Release checksums (v1.3.0)

Verify your downloaded files match these SHA256 hashes before running:

a8e0f8e922c05755a43a8bb156a327984d9fbc50a620ce08e172a48d72f79a39  healthy-backup.sh
ae0bda0195e408aee84f441a39494995f8cd1eb5578eba07d0870810d6ad1433  verify-backup.sh
185fa27b052ed1c9d294f4d40a7700a501683906b0d6d2e75ab059532decbd4f  setup.sh

sha256sum healthy-backup.sh verify-backup.sh setup.sh