Borgup

Borgup – A configuration-based wrapper for Borg Backup

Main features

• Use Borg Backup's everyday commands with most options read from a configuration.
• Get notifications in your window manager when the backup starts, finishes, or fails.

Preparation

• Install Borg Backup.
  • On CentOS 7 it is available in the repository EL_7_epel_x86_64.

    yum install borgbackup
    

Quick start

• Create configuration:

  $ mkdir doc-backup
  $ cat >doc-backup/config
  REPOSITORY=/mnt/backup/documents
  ARCHIVE="doc-A-`/bin/date +\%Y\%m\%d\-\%H\%M\%S`"
  SOURCE_PATHS="/home/my-name/documents"
  PRUNE_PREFIX="doc-A-"
  PRUNE_OPTIONS="--keep-daily 7 --keep-monthly 12 --keep-yearly 100"
  ^D
  

• Pick a passphrase, e.g. using pwgen -nysB 16, and write it to the configugration:

  $ cat >doc-backup/.borgup-passphrase
  export BORG_PASSPHRASE='YOUR_BORG_PASSPHRASE_GOES_HERE'
  ^D
  

  Important: Keep a copy of your passphrase in a safe place. Storing it in your backup won't help you, of course.
• Initialize Borg repository:

  $ borgup init --encryption repokey-blake2 doc-backup
  

• Create a backup archive:

  $ borgup create doc-backup
  

• Prune old archives:

  $ borgup prune doc-backup
  

• List existing archives:

  $ borgup list doc-backup
  

Would you like to know more?

Full documentation

See borgup --help and borgup --help-config.

Enable notifications

This currently works only with the window manager XFCE.

• Make sure the command notify-send is installed. (On CentOS 7 is comes from the package libnotify.)
• Add

  NOTIFY_USER=my-name
  NOTIFY_WM=xfce
  

  to the config file. You will get notifications for the Borgup commands create and prune when they start, finish, or fail. The latter is a persistent notification. That is particularly useful when running Borgup from Cron.

Run Borgup from Cron

For example:

# cat >/etc/cron.daily/borgup
#!/bin/bash
BORGUP=/path/to/borgup
CONFIGDIR=/path/to/doc-backup
LOGDIR=/path/to/log-dir
sudo -u my-name nice -n 19 ionice -c2 -n7 bash -c "
  $BORGUP create $CONFIGDIR
  $BORGUP prune $CONFIGDIR
" >>$LOGDIR/borgup-`/bin/date +\%Y-\%m`.log 2>&1
^D
chmod u+x /etc/cron.daily/borgup

Also you probably want to make sure that anacron is installed, unless your computer it always on.

Verify that is really works

• Do you get error notifications? In that case it does not yet work.
• Do you get notification when Borgup starts and finishes? Good!
• Look at the log specified in /etc/cron.daily/borgup. There should be one run of create and one of prune per day.

Restore files from a backup

Please use the plain Borg command. I am sorry, but Borgup currently supports only Borg's most common everyday commands. However, continuing the example from above, it roughly goes this way:

• Use borgup list to determine the name of the archive you want to access, e.g. doc-A-19501105-061500.

  # borgup list doc-backup
  

• Use borg mount to mount that archive using the Borg repository and archive name and a mount point. You'll need to enter the passphrase from doc-backup/.borgup-passphrase.

  # borg mount /mnt/backup/documents::doc-A-19501105-061500 /mnt/borg
  

• Locate the files to restore in the mounted backup and copy them.

  # cp /mnt/borg/home/my-name/documents/important-thing /home/my-name/documents/important-thing.restored
  

• Unmount.

  # borg umount /mnt/borg
  

Troubleshooting

I do not get notifications

• Did you set NOTIFY_USER and NOTIFY_WM in Borg's configuration?
• Is notify-send installed and working? Try it out:

  # notify-send --icon=dialog-information --urgency low "Testing notify-send" "It works\!"
  

• Are you using the window manager XFCE? If you don't, but still notify-send works, find out how to determine the required DBUS_KEY from root. Then we can probably patch that into Borgup.