ParanoidOneDriveBackup
Backup your OneDrive cloud files to any (Linux) Server
Missing Features
- OneNote notebook backup: Microsoft has yet not implemented an option in the MS Graph API to download the .one files of your OneNote notebooks. Until they implement this feature it will not be available in this application either.
- windows service support (but in theory the application should run on Windows too, if you compile it for that)
Motivation
It happened two times to me that I deleted my whole OneDrive cloud files by making a mistake while using some OneDrive client on Linux. Altough you can recover your cloud files from the trash in OneDrive it's very annoying to do that file by file and if you recover all files you have a lot of old trash files in your OneDrive that you deleted before. Another problem is that deleted OneNote notebooks don't go to the trash if you delete them by using a third party sync client. This application tries to prevent such issues by giving the possibility to backup your cloud files (including your notebooks) any time you want to any Linux or Windows PC/Server.
Prerequisites
- Linux
or Windows 10(64 bit) - .NET Core x64 runtime
Setup
The application is designed to run as a service on both platforms, but you should have no problem using it as a normal console application. So just running it without the following setup steps should work totally fine, but then you have to manage running the application at specific times yourself.
Linux
Download the latest release files and extract them to ~/ParanoidOneDriveBackup (or another folder of your choice).
Run the app for the first time: ~/ParanoidOneDriveBackup/ParanoidOneDriveBackup
The app copies the default config file to your application data folder. Edit it to your needs: nano ~/.config/ParanoidOneDriveBackup/config.json. You can find more information to the MS graph client id at the MS graph section of this readme.
Now run the app another time. If your config file is valid the app prints instructions on how to authorize in the console. Once you have authorized the app to read your OneDrive files it should start the first backup directly. (You can cancel it if you want)
Registering the app to systemd:
Copy the two systemd files (.service, .timer) to /etc/systemd/system and modify them to your needs. The default files specify that the app should do a backup every day at 4 pm.
Start the service with systemctl start ParanoidOneDriveBackup.service and check that there are no errors in the log with journalctl -u ParanoidOneDriveBackup. Optionally: Stop the service with systemctl stop ParanoidOneDriveBackup.service
Enable the timer service with systemctl enable ParanoidOneDriveBackup.timer. Systemd automatically starts the timer again on system startup.
Windows
currently not supported as a service
Configuration
MS Graph
The application uses the Microsoft Graph API to backup your files.
Permissions
The app uses 2 permissions:
| Permission | Description |
|---|---|
| Files.Read | needed to download your OneDrive files |
| offline_access | needed to stay logged in |
Client Id
You can try using my registered app with the client id: ae032616-b374-484d-8fef-aba26e502f4a
If this client id does not work for you, you can register your own app following this article and these instructions:
On the "Register an application" page add the redirect URL https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/nativeclient as "Public client/native (mobile & desktop)".
On the "Authentication" tab select "Yes" for "Default client type".
Additionally you need to specify the necessary scopes of your the application. You can do that in the "API permissions" tab. Search for the scopes that are specified in the default config file (ParanoidOneDriveBackup/Resources/config.json) and add them to your app's permissions.
Finally copy the client id at the "Overview" tab and insert it in your config file.
Ignore File
The ignore file works just like gitignore. All files or folders that match the rules in the ignore file are not being downloaded.
Implementation Notes
- The config file is stored at:
~/.config/ParanoidOneDriveBackup/config.json(Linux)%localappdata%/ParanoidOneDriveBackup/config.json(Windows)
- The ignore file is stored at:
~/.config/ParanoidOneDriveBackup/ignore(Linux)%localappdata%/ParanoidOneDriveBackup/ignore(Windows)
- The token cache file is stored at:
~/.cache/ParanoidOneDriveBackup/token_cache.bin3(Linux)%localappdata%/ParanoidOneDriveBackup/token_cache.bin3(Windows)
- The deleting of the oldest backups operates on the folder names of the backups so it's safe to just rename a backup folder to keep it "forever". Folders with invalid suffixes are being ignored.