# For the pro users, here are some advanced features of borg, so you can impress your friends. ;) # Note: This screencast was made with borg version 1.1.0 – older or newer borg versions may behave differently. # First of all, we can use several environment variables for borg. # E.g. we do not want to type in our repo path and password again and again… export BORG_REPO='/media/backup/borgdemo' export BORG_PASSPHRASE='1234' # Problem solved, borg will use this automatically… :) # We'll use this right away… ## ADVANCED CREATION ## # We can also use some placeholders in our archive name… borg create --stats --progress --compression lz4 ::{user}-{now} Wallpaper # Notice the backup name. # And we can put completely different data, with different backup settings, in our backup. It will be deduplicated, anyway: borg create --stats --progress --compression zlib,6 --exclude ~/Downloads/big ::{user}-{now} ~/Downloads # Or let's backup a device via STDIN. sudo dd if=/dev/loop0 bs=10M | borg create --progress --stats ::specialbackup - # Let's continue with some simple things: ## USEFUL COMMANDS ## # You can show some information about an archive. You can even do it without needing to specify the archive name: borg info :: --last 1 # So let's rename our last archive: borg rename ::specialbackup backup-block-device borg info :: --last 1 # A very important step if you choose keyfile mode (where the keyfile is only saved locally) is to export your keyfile and possibly print it, etc. borg key export :: --qr-code file.html # this creates a nice HTML, but when you want something simpler… < remove comment > < let there: borg check > --paper # this is a "manual input"-only backup (but it is also included in the --qr-code option) ## MAINTENANCE ## # Sometimes backups get broken or we want a regular "checkup" that everything is okay… borg check -v :: # Next problem: Usually you do not have infinite disk space. So you may need to prune your archive… # You can tune this in every detail. See the docs for details. Here only a simple example: borg prune --list --keep-last 1 --dry-run # When actually executing it in a script, you have to use it without the --dry-run option, of course. ## RESTORE ## # When you want to see the diff between two archives use this command. # E.g. what happened between the first two backups? borg diff ::backup1 backup2 # Ah, we added a file, right… # There are also other ways to extract the data. # E.g. as a tar archive. borg export-tar --progress ::backup2 backup.tar.gz ls -l # You can mount an archive or even the whole repository: mkdir /tmp/mount borg mount :: /tmp/mount ls -la /tmp/mount borg umount /tmp/mount # That's it, but of course there is more to explore, so have a look at the docs.