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What I just learned about restoring BorgBackups (github.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Maybe I state the obvious here but anyway:

Tonight I found a super comfi way to browse and restore data from Borg repositories. In vorta you can add any existing borg repository and mount the containing backups in a very functional GUI. Until now I somehow assumed you could only deal with backups created in vorta which is not true.

For context let me explain why I find that so useful: I am using a wonderful Borg / Borgmatic container from the borgmatic collective. It works super reliable. But for restoring files you have to mount the backup in the container and deal with the files inside the container. This can be difficult i.e. when looking for a specific file in a folder with a lot of files (like a foto collection where you accidentally deleted one file).

If any Borg users are out there: I would be interested what your workflows look like.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (11 children)

borgmatic dev here. First of all, if Vorta is working well for you to recover files, then by all means use Vorta! Right tool for the job and all. Having said that, a couple of thoughts on using borgmatic in Docker and recovering files:

borgmatic has a search feature that makes finding a particular file in an archive or across archives pretty easy. So that might be step one in restoring an accidentally deleted file.

Once you've found the file and archive to restore, you can either use borgmatic extract or borgmatic mount. With extract, you copy one or more files out of a backup archives. The challenge though is that with borgmatic in a container, by default there's not an easy way to copy those files into their original locations. However I think the "fix" is to mount your source volumes as read-write instead of (the documented) read-only. That way you can easily copy extracted files back to where they belong.

As for borgmatic mount, you've got a similar challenge and fix. You can presumably mount backup archives (or a whole repository) within the container, but then you need to copy your recovered files out of that mount into their original source volumes. So that probably also means those volumes need to be mounted read-write.

Let me know if you have any questions!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Is there a way to have an ssh remote without borg installed on the target?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

You could always sftp mount the repo if you cant install borg but have sftp support. Probably won't be as efficient though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nope! Borg always requires Borg on the remote side. It's Borg's biggest strength and weakness versus competing backup systems IMO. Strength, because it can do pretty smart stuff with its own code running on both sides. Weakness, because it means it doesn't work natively with cloud object storage like S3. It's a tradeoff like anything else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Makes sense - compromises like you say.

So in the context of unraid, do I just run the borgmatic container on both ends? Or should there be a specific 'server' one?

EDIT: I found borgserver. I'm pretty sure that's the correct one to use.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not super familiar with Unraid, but yeah, the borgserver image sounds like it'd work for this.. You don't need borgmatic on the server side unless you want it there to make running Borg commands easier.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Is it normal for borg to nag for my password so many times?

80a8f8fc1129:/# borgmatic list
local: Listing archives
Enter passphrase for key /mnt/borg-repository:
Enter passphrase for key /mnt/borg-repository:
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T14:54:25.535734 Wed, 2023-11-08 14:54:28 [5a6245718dcb7e7dfec023cf0a62f568a9714b0f27d7a422e97b44870e9ecfbd]
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T14:55:06.056089 Wed, 2023-11-08 14:55:08 [bce2ae9ff5b58212993281c938eb6812fe706bb1b62b80e40a32d38179f3b86c]
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T14:55:24.704310 Wed, 2023-11-08 14:55:28 [7793ab62dac221d3b90434c19e0c44f917c9caedbc6250b71c86c78327348539]
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T15:01:25.862051 Wed, 2023-11-08 15:01:28 [b1c83dc0ccd3d04ddfcb7d39358e8978f93a705b792105ef9c0389faf6d6e387]
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T15:02:25.774879 Wed, 2023-11-08 15:02:28 [fe74cdf86dceea5a21d5305e3314733adf31d5cfe3d63e934381cec2176e59c2]
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T15:02:31.879678 Wed, 2023-11-08 15:02:38 [9a2189207aa475ac866a4f7aa62d6d3c83ae53bd008dd4240de2b4277554620e]
local: Listing archives
Enter passphrase for key /mnt/borg-repository:
Enter passphrase for key /mnt/borg-repository:
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T14:54:25.535734 Wed, 2023-11-08 14:54:28 [5a6245718dcb7e7dfec023cf0a62f568a9714b0f27d7a422e97b44870e9ecfbd]
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T14:55:06.056089 Wed, 2023-11-08 14:55:08 [bce2ae9ff5b58212993281c938eb6812fe706bb1b62b80e40a32d38179f3b86c]
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T14:55:24.704310 Wed, 2023-11-08 14:55:28 [7793ab62dac221d3b90434c19e0c44f917c9caedbc6250b71c86c78327348539]
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T15:01:25.862051 Wed, 2023-11-08 15:01:28 [b1c83dc0ccd3d04ddfcb7d39358e8978f93a705b792105ef9c0389faf6d6e387]
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T15:02:25.774879 Wed, 2023-11-08 15:02:28 [fe74cdf86dceea5a21d5305e3314733adf31d5cfe3d63e934381cec2176e59c2]
80a8f8fc1129-2023-11-08T15:02:31.879678 Wed, 2023-11-08 15:02:38 [9a2189207aa475ac866a4f7aa62d6d3c83ae53bd008dd4240de2b4277554620e]
80a8f8fc1129:/#

Context: I have 2 config files, as I would prefer to have each app I want backed up in a separate config if reasonable. I don't have a remote setup yet - it's just using a local repository.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Separate configs is totally reasonable. It just sounds like you haven't configured your Borg passphrase with borgmatic.. Otherwise it wouldn't prompt for your passphrase at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I missed that part in the docs - thanks. Now it's working way better. Thanks heaps - I'm going to trial this alongside my duplicati for a bit (as I've heard a few too many horror stories about duplicati...)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I hope one (or both!) of them end up working out for you.

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