django-rclone

Django database and media backup management commands, powered by rclone.

django-rclone bridges Django's database layer with rclone's file transfer layer. You get native database dumps piped directly to any of rclone's 70+ supported cloud storage backends -- no temp files, no intermediate archives, no Python reimplementations of what rclone already does.

Why rclone instead of Django Storages?

django-dbbackup is a mature and well-regarded backup solution. It wraps Django Storages for upload, implements GPG encryption in Python, handles gzip compression, and parses filenames with regex to manage backups.

django-rclone takes a different approach: delegate everything that isn't Django-specific to rclone.

Concern	django-dbbackup	django-rclone
Storage backends	Django Storages (S3, GCS, etc.)	rclone (70+ backends natively)
Encryption	GPG subprocess wrapper in Python	rclone crypt remote
Compression	gzip in Python	rclone compress remote or --compress flag
Media backup	Tar archive, then upload	rclone sync (incremental, no archiving)
Backup listing	Filename regex parsing	rclone lsjson (structured JSON)
Temp files	SpooledTemporaryFile	None -- pipes directly via rclone rcat

The result is significantly less code doing significantly less work. Storage abstraction, encryption, compression, and incremental sync are all rclone's problem -- django-rclone only owns what Django must own: database connectors, management commands, and signals.

Requirements

• Python 3.13+
• Django 4.2+
• rclone installed and configured

Quick start

pip install django-rclone

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    "django_rclone",
]

DJANGO_RCLONE = {
    "REMOTE": "myremote:backups",
}

python manage.py dbbackup       # Backup database
python manage.py dbrestore      # Restore latest backup
python manage.py mediabackup    # Sync media files to remote
python manage.py mediarestore   # Sync media files from remote
python manage.py listbackups    # List all backups

See the Getting Started guide for a full walkthrough.

Supported databases

Database	Connector	Dump tool	Format
PostgreSQL	PgDumpConnector	pg_dump / pg_restore	Custom (binary)
PostGIS	PgDumpGisConnector	pg_dump / pg_restore	Custom (binary)
MySQL / MariaDB	MysqlDumpConnector	mysqldump / mysql	SQL text
SQLite	SqliteConnector	sqlite3 .dump	SQL text
MongoDB	MongoDumpConnector	mongodump / mongorestore	Archive (binary)

Architecture

Management Commands (dbbackup, dbrestore, mediabackup, mediarestore, listbackups)
        |                           |
   DB Connectors              rclone.py
   (pg, mysql, sqlite,    (subprocess wrapper)
    mongodb)
        |                           |
   Database binary              rclone binary
                          (70+ storage backends)

Database dumps stream directly from the dump process into rclone rcat via Unix pipes. No intermediate files are written. Restores work in reverse: rclone cat streams into the database restore process. The command layer finalizes subprocesses with centralized deadlock-safe pipe draining.

Media backups use rclone sync, which is incremental by default -- only changed files are transferred.