Backup-Strategy: Obsidian Notes to Git with NextCloud

There are plugins that add functionality to Obsidian to automatically backup your notes in a Git server or even use IT for synchronization between multiple devices.

Personally, I use my NextCloud instance and the Remotely Save Plugin for sync. But I want to be better safe than sorry and I know about the advantages of file revisions/versions provided by Git SCM. For this reason I wanted to backup my notes regularily in my Gitea instance on my vps. Unfortunately, the Git Plugin for Obsidian is experimental for mobile devices. So I needed a different approach…

On my home server I have a continous sync with my NextCloud using nextcloudcmd as headless client and a simple cron job. Another job Is now responsible to commit a snapshot of my notes once a day into the remote Git Repository.

Setup NextCloud Sync

I use Rocky Linux on my home server and installed the nextcloud-client with dnf

sudo dnf install nextcloud-client

Afterwards, I created a wrapper script in ~/bin/nextcloud-sync.sh that gets called by a cron job to sync from my remote server to my local server:

#!/bin/bash

nextcloudcmd ~/nextcloud https://user:password@server.tld

(Of course the local directory ~/nextcloud should be present on the server.

Initialize Git Repository

Assumption: You already have git installed on the Server.

cd ~/nextcloud/notes
git init
git remote add origin git@git-server:username/repo.git

Setup Credential Helper

git config --global credential.helper store

Optional: Setup .gitignore

If you want to exclude some files (or pattern) from your Git repo, you need to create a .gitignore file.

Manual Initial commit to Store Credential

git commit -am "initial commit"
git push --set-upstream origin main

This step should query you for your Git credentials that are stored in the Git Credential Helper afterwards and will be reused by our cronjob.

Backup Script for periodic backups

#!/bin/bash

# === Konfiguration ===
REPO_DIR="$HOME/nextcloud/notes"
LOGFILE="$REPO_DIR/git-backup.log"
DATE=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')

# === Logging-Funktion ===
log() {
    echo "[$DATE] $1" >> "$LOGFILE"
}

# === Ausführung ===
cd "$REPO_DIR" || {
    log "FEHLER: Verzeichnis $REPO_DIR nicht gefunden."
    exit 1
}

# === Git Workflow ===
log "Starte Git-Backup..."

# Änderungen erfassen
git add . >> "$LOGFILE" 2>&1

# Nur committen, wenn es auch Änderungen gibt
if ! git diff --cached --quiet; then
    git commit -m "Automatisches Backup: $DATE" >> "$LOGFILE" 2>&1
    git push >> "$LOGFILE" 2>&1

    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
        log "Backup erfolgreich gepusht."
    else
        log "FEHLER beim Push."
    fi
else
    log "Keine Änderungen – kein Commit notwendig."
fi

Crontab

Edit the crontab with the command

crontab -e

For this backup I added two periodic jobs:

*/15 * * * $HOME/bin/nextcloud-sync.sh
0 3 * * * $HOME/bin/obsidian_git_backup.sh