Repository browsing and ValidationError: The 'X-Forwarded-For' header

[PauleyQ]

First of all, I'd like to thank you for creating Pluton. I've been evaluating Restic frontends for my homelab, and I wanted to share some feedback after spending some time with your software.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. The installation was straightforward, the application feels stable, and the user interface is one of the nicest I've seen among Restic management tools. It looks modern, polished and well thought out, and the notification system worked perfectly for me (both email and Discord). However, I ran into two issues that I think deserves attention.

My (test) backup repository contains approximately 22 GB of data and around 760,000 files. Creating backups works flawlessly, but attempting to browse snapshots or restore individual files consistently causes the web interface to freeze. In several cases the backend crashed with:

FATAL ERROR: Reached heap limit
Allocation failed - JavaScript heap out of memory

While investigating the issue (nice documentation btw.) I discovered that repository browsing and individual file restore appear to be Pro-only features. Personally, I think these are fundamental backup features rather than premium ones. Being able to restore a single file is something users need regularly, and requiring the entire machine to be restored just to recover one file feels excessive. If these features are intentionally limited to the Pro version, I would also suggest making that much clearer in the user interface, for example by labeling the menu entries as "Browse (Pro)" or displaying a message explaining that the feature requires a Pro license. At the moment it isn't obvious, and it initially looked like a software bug.

For comparison, I opened the exact same repository over the wireless network using Restic Browser on Windows, and it loaded the repository and snapshots in just a couple of seconds without any issues. This makes me believe the repository itself is perfectly healthy and that the problem is specific to how Pluton handles snapshot browsing.

I also encountered a reverse proxy issue when running Pluton behind Caddy. Pluton repeatedly logged the following error:

ValidationError: The 'X-Forwarded-For' header is set but the Express 'trust proxy' setting is false (default). This could indicate a misconfiguration which would prevent express-rate-limit from accurately identifying users.
code: 'ERR_ERL_UNEXPECTED_X_FORWARDED_FOR'

I think this happens because the reverse proxy correctly sends the X-Forwarded-For header, while the Express application does not trust the proxy by default. As a result, express-rate-limit cannot reliably identify the original client IP address and reports the configuration as invalid.

Since reverse proxy deployment is very common, it would be helpful if Pluton provided a documented and supported way to configure Express trust proxy, preferably through an environment variable or application setting. At the moment, a normal reverse proxy setup produces a recurring validation error even though the proxy itself is configured correctly. Eventually I got everything working, but I think this is an area where Pluton could be improved.

Despite these issues, I genuinely enjoyed using Pluton. The application feels well designed, easy to use, and much more polished than many alternatives. I think it has great potential, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves.

I hope you don't take these comments as criticism of the project itself. Quite the opposite — I took the time to write this because I genuinely like Pluton and think it has the potential to become one of the best Restic frontends available. I simply wanted to share the issues I encountered in the hope that they help improve an already very promising project.

Thank you for your work, and I wish you the best of luck with the project!

[towfiqi]

@PauleyQ Both the issues you described are actually bugs in the software. I have already fixed the reverse proxy issue. In the next version, you will be able to allow reverse proxy to pass through Express by setting a TRUST_PROXY env value.

As for the snapshot browsing issue, I want to clarify that initially, the snapshot browsing feature was only available to PRO, but it was added to the open source edition a few months ago. The doc should have been updated. I will look into the docs again to correct this. And you can restore a single file with the non-PRO edition as well. Open the restore backup screen, and then from the file list, uncheck everything, and select the ones you want to restore. But I, the Restore Wizards, file list might have the same issue for you.

The reason why your large snapshot loads fine with restic browser and not Pluton is that you are viewing the large file list in a browser, which has various limitations. Your snapshot file list is quite large, and the current performance optimization I put in place is not working for it, hence it's crashing. I need to rethink and refactor how a file list this large should be handled in the browser.