Backups with Borg

This is a collection of scripts and documentation, to create daily backups of a personal computer with the program Borg. The scripts work only on Linux.

• Backups are made daily, old backups are deleted. The backups are encrypted.
• Only the directories /home and /usr/local are backed up, not the complete system.
• The backup repository can be duplicated on a removable or external hard disk.

Documentation for the Borg program:

https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html

This collection of scripts is developed on Github:

https://github.com/eike-welk/borg-backup-scripts

Installation

To install, become root, and run the script:

install.sh

Usage

Obviously you must be root for everything described here.

Create a new repository

Create the directory, where you want to keep your backup repository. For example: /backups/borg-backup, /srv/borg-backup or /var/lib/borg-backup.

Change into this directory, and run borg-backup-init.sh. The script asks you for a repository name, a password, and a path to duplicate the backup repository.

The script creates a new backup repository (in the current directory). It also creates configuration files, beautifies the current directory, and starts the timer.

From then on, a backup is created every night with the script borg-backup-create.sh.

Restore a Lost File

To restore a small amount of lost data:

1. Mount the backup repository with: borg mount name-of-the-repository mnt/. You are asked for the repository's password. (There is a directory mnt/ in the backup directory for this purpose.)

2. Browse the repository at the directory where it is mounted. Copy the lost files.

   Accessing the backup this way is relatively slow, graphical file managers can appear to hang from time to time.

3. Detach (unmount) the backup repository from the file system with: borg umount mnt/.

Duplicate the Repository

To duplicate the repository on an external hard disk:

1. Mount the external hard disk to the configured directory.
2. Run borg-backup-rsync.sh.

The external hard disk(s) must be configured in /etc/borg-backup/rsync-config.sh.

The Scripts

borg-backup-init.sh

borg-backup-init.sh creates a new backup repository in the current directory, and sets up the necessary configuration files. It asks the user for a repository name, a password, and a path to duplicate the backup repository.

borg-backup-create.sh

borg-backup-create.sh creates a backup of /home and /usr/local. The backups are stored in the backup repository, older backups are deleted, the last yearly backup is kept indefinitely.

The script is run daily by Systemd. It can also be run manually, if it is necessary.

borg-backup-rsync.sh

borg-backup-rsync.sh duplicates the repository to other directories with rsync. Intended for removable hard disks.

Files that were deleted in the repository, are removed from the duplicates too. This make the script quite dangerous: Syncing a damaged repository, will damage the duplicates too.