How I configure BorgBackup and borgmatic (2023) (opens in new tab)

(justus.pw)

40 pointsjustusw7mo ago9 comments

9 comments

I used Borg for years and it's good, but the fact that you can only backup to SSH is quite limiting. I eventually found Restic & Rustic which are much better and support way more backends:

https://rustic.cli.rs/docs/comparison-restic.html#supported-...

BitPirate7mo ago

Borg 2.0 (unreleased) is moving in a similar direction with borgstore:

https://www.borgbackup.org/releases/borg-2.0.html

pavel_lishin7mo ago

Can't you transfer the resulting archive however you want? rsync, ftp, USB stick glued to a bird, tattooed onto a shaved man's head, etc?

kernc7mo ago

The intricacies of Borg are exactly why I switched over to a wrapper around pure git: https://kernc.github.io/myba/

justuswOP7mo ago

Thank you for the link, I'm quite intrigued by myba. At least on macOS, I spend way too much time finding workarounds, even with borgmatic.

TacticalCoder7mo ago

Oh that's interesting: it uses two similarly shaped Git repos with one being transparently encrypted.

I take it that way you can deduplicate backups.

My own backup procedure uses Git too: but I don't deduplicate. For every Git repo my backup procedure (which runs from an OCI containers and mounts the Git repo volume read-only) does:

    - git clone the entire repo
    - clean any mess
    - run git fsck (you never know you know)
    - tar + compress
    - encrypt
    - add a cryptographic sum to the unique resulting encrypted file
    - deduplicate (but this only works if zero change were made to the Git repo since the last backup)
    - send if not a duplicate
    - on the remote end: verify the cryptographic hash, decrypt, uncompress/untar, re-run git fsck (you never know you know)

This way I'm reasonably sure the backup is not corrupted.

FWIW the cryptographic hash allowed me to catch a bit flip, once.

So my files are encrypted too but my main issue is any change to a Git repo means a new full backup has to be made.

I can see how something automated like myba could help.

vjvjvjvjghv7mo ago

I know Borg has a good reputation but two years ago I experimented with a Linux laptop. I set up Borg and within 6 months my backups were corrupted twice and not recoverable. Not sure if this common but I personally wouldn’t use it again.

throwaway2774327mo ago

Lots of people haven't had to actually restore their data. Somehow it has good marketing. I used it for a while and was not impressed. Random Python errors, requires too much scripting, and at least on my data terrible restore speed.

I followed development on Github and what I saw in terms of fixes and commits gave me pause. Not how I like my critical backup software written.

I now use restic and sleep much better.

imcritic7mo ago

This site seems to use netlify and it doesn't serve responses.

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