BorgBackup (short: Borg) is a deduplicating backup program. Optionally, it supports compression and authenticated encryption.

The main goal of Borg is to provide an efficient and secure way to backup data. The data deduplication technique used makes Borg suitable for daily backups since only changes are stored. The authenticated encryption technique makes it suitable for backups to not fully trusted targets. 1

Installation

BorgBackup can be installed with the Pakfire web interface or via the console:

pakfire install borgbackup

Usage

There is no web interface for this Addon. To run this Addon open the client console or terminal and access the IPFire box via SSH.

To obtain a list of possible commands, options, and arguments enter borg -h:

The output is similar to this:

[root@ipfire ~]# borg -h
usage: borg [-V] [-h] [--critical] [--error] [--warning] [--info] [--debug]
            [--debug-topic TOPIC] [-p] [--log-json] [--lock-wait SECONDS]
            [--show-version] [--show-rc] [--umask M] [--remote-path PATH]
            [--remote-ratelimit RATE] [--consider-part-files]
            [--debug-profile FILE] [--rsh RSH]
            <command> ...

Local backup of IPFire device (example)

  1. Format (as ext4) and mount an external drive. See Extra HD

  2. Run this command once to setup the repository to the external drive. See borg init --help

borg init --verbose --encryption=none /mnt/hdd/borgbackup
  1. Run this daily (or hourly if you want) via fcron. It will backup /var and /etc and /root. See borg create --help
/usr/bin/borg create --verbose --stats              \
    --exclude-caches                                \
    --exclude '~/.cache'                            \
    --exclude '/root/.cache'                        \
    /mnt/hdd/borgbackup::{now:%Y-%m-%d__%H.%M.%S}   \
    /etc /var /root
  1. Run this weekly (or daily if you want) via fcron. See borg prune --help
/usr/bin/borg prune --verbose --list            \
    --keep-hourly=24                            \
    --keep-daily=7                              \
    --keep-weekly=4                             \
    --keep-monthly=12                           \
    --keep-yearly=2                             \
    /mnt/hdd/borgbackup
  1. Run this weekly (or daily if you want) via fcron. See borg compact --help
/usr/bin/borg compact --verbose /mnt/hdd/borgbackup