borg – borgbackup

This is borg2!

Please note that this is the README for (unstable) Borg2 / master branch.

For general project infos, versioned docs, screen casts, please see there:

https://www.borgbackup.org/

Borg2 is currently in beta testing and might get major and/or
breaking changes between beta releases (and there is no beta to
next-beta upgrade code, so you will have to delete and re-create repos).

Thus, DO NOT USE BORG2 FOR YOUR PRODUCTION BACKUPS! Please help with
testing it, but set it up additionally to your production backups.

What is BorgBackup?

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 back up 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 targets not
fully trusted.

See the installation manual_ or, if you have already
downloaded Borg, `docs/installation.rst` to get started with Borg.

.. _installation manual: https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/master/installation.html

Main features
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Space efficient storage
Deduplication based on content-defined chunking is used to reduce the number
of bytes stored: each file is split into a number of variable length chunks
and only chunks that have never been seen before are added to the repository.

A chunk is considered duplicate if its id_hash value is identical.
A cryptographically strong hash or MAC function is used as id_hash, e.g.
(hmac-)sha256.

To deduplicate, all the chunks in the same repository are considered, no
matter whether they come from different machines, from previous backups,
from the same backup or even from the same single file.

Compared to other deduplication approaches, this method does NOT depend on:

• file/directory names staying the same: So you can move your stuff around

without killing the deduplication, even between machines sharing a repo.

• complete files or time stamps staying the same: If a big file changes a

little, only a few new chunks need to be stored - this is great for VMs or
raw disks.

• The absolute position of a data chunk inside a file: Stuff may get shifted

and will still be found by the deduplication algorithm.

Supported chunkers:

• buzhash (as in borg 1.x) / buzhash64 (improved)
• fastCDC
• fixed

Speed

• performance-critical code (chunking, compression, encryption) is

implemented in C/Cython

• local caching
• quick detection of unmodified files

Data encryption
All data can be protected client-side using 256-bit authenticated encryption
(AES-OCB or chacha20-poly1305), ensuring data confidentiality, integrity and
authenticity.

Hashing
You can choose between HMAC-SHA256 and Blake3.

Obfuscation
Optionally, Borg can actively obfuscate, e.g., the size of files/chunks to
make fingerprinting attacks more difficult.

Compression
All data can be optionally compressed:

• lz4 (super fast, low compression)
• zstd (wide range from high speed and low compression to high compression

and lower speed)

• zlib (medium speed and compression)
• lzma (low speed, high compression)

Off-site backups
Borg can store data on any remote host accessible via misc. protocols:

• ssh (REST-http-over-stdio-over-ssh) and https (REST-http-over-tcp).

Significant performance gains can be achieved with this by having a
remote agent (borg must be installed on the repo server).

• sftp
• S3 / B2
• lots of protocols / providers supported by rclone

Backups mountable as file systems
Backup archives are mountable as user-space file systems for easy interactive
backup examination and restores (e.g., by using a regular file manager).

Easy installation on multiple platforms
We offer single-file binaries that do not require installing anything -
you can just run them on these platforms:

• Linux
• macOS
• FreeBSD
• OpenBSD and NetBSD (no xattrs/ACLs support or binaries yet)
• Cygwin (experimental, no binaries yet)
• Windows (MSYS2/MINGW borg.exe, experimental)
• Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows 10/11 (experimental)

Free and Open Source Software

• security and functionality can be audited independently
• licensed under the BSD (3-clause) license, see License_ for the

complete license

Easy to use
~~~~~~~~~~~

For ease of use, set the BORG_REPO environment variable::

$ export BORG_REPO=/path/to/repo

Create a new backup repository (see `borg repo-create --help` for encryption options)::

$ borg repo-create --encryption=aes256-ocb --key-location=repokey

Create a new backup archive::

$ borg create docs ~/Documents

Now do another backup, just to show off the great deduplication::

$ borg create -v --stats docs ~/Documents
Repository: /path/to/repo
Archive name: docs
Archive fingerprint: 7714aef97c1a24539cc3dc73f79b060f14af04e2541da33d54c7ee8e81a00089
Time (start): Mon, 2022-10-03 19:57:35 +0200
Time (end): Mon, 2022-10-03 19:57:35 +0200
Duration: 0.01 seconds
Number of files: 24
Original size: 29.73 MB
Deduplicated size: 520 B

For demo videos, check out our homepage: https://www.borgbackup.org/#demo

Helping, donations and bounties, becoming a Patron

Your help is always welcome!

Spread the word, give feedback, help with documentation, testing or development.

You can also give monetary support to the project, see here for details:

https://www.borgbackup.org/#fund

Thanks to everyone who has helped so far - these are the people with the most
commits, see FAME.md _
for the full list:

.. image:: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/borgbackup/borg/master/FAME.svg
:alt: Borg contributors by commit count
:target: https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/blob/master/FAME.md

Links

• Main website _
• Releases _,

PyPI packages _ and
Changelog _

• GitHub _ and

Issue tracker _.

• Web chat (IRC) _ and

Mailing list _

• License _
• Security contact _

Compatibility notes

EXPECT THAT WE WILL BREAK COMPATIBILITY REPEATEDLY WHEN MAJOR RELEASE NUMBER
CHANGES (like when going from 0.x.y to 1.0.0 or from 1.x.y to 2.0.0).

NOT RELEASED DEVELOPMENT VERSIONS HAVE UNKNOWN COMPATIBILITY PROPERTIES.

THIS IS SOFTWARE IN DEVELOPMENT, DECIDE FOR YOURSELF WHETHER IT FITS YOUR NEEDS.

Security issues should be reported to the Security contact_ (or
see `docs/support.rst` in the source distribution).

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.. |doc| image:: https://readthedocs.org/projects/borgbackup/badge/?version=master
:alt: Documentation
:target: https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/master/

.. |build| image:: https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/actions/workflows/ci.yml/badge.svg?branch=master
:alt: Build Status (master)
:target: https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/actions

.. |coverage| image:: https://codecov.io/github/borgbackup/borg/coverage.svg?branch=master
:alt: Test Coverage
:target: https://codecov.io/github/borgbackup/borg?branch=master

.. |bestpractices| image:: https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/projects/271/badge
:alt: Best Practices Score
:target: https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/projects/271

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