syborg

This is mainly a borg wrapper with some nice utilities:

• Backups are defined with configuration files
• Easily mix multiple archives with multiple repositories (see config example).
• Integrates with rclone, which allows maintaining a repository in a cloud storage provider such as dropbox.
• Caches repository keys, ssh keys and rclone config passwords in the kernel keyring of the user.
• Also wraps some other borg commands in an attempt to provide nice UI for interacting with defined repositories.

This tool is in part inspired by borgmatic, but I've decide to write a new tool that better attends my own needs.

Usage

Here's a simple configuration file (adapted from borgmatic's own config example):

# /root/.config/syborg/syborg.cfg example
[backup.example]
archives = main
repositories = borgbase,rsyncnet,local
borg.prune.keep-daily = 7
borg.prune.keep-weekly = 4
borg.prune.keep-monthly = 6

[archive.main]
basedir = /
include =
  home
  etc

[repository.borgbase]
env.BORG_REPO = k8pDxu32@k8pDxu32.repo.borgbase.com:repo

[repository.rsyncnet]
env.BORG_REPO = 1234@usw-s001.rsync.net:backups.borg
env.BORG_REMOTE_PATH = borg1

[repository.local]
env.BORG_REPO = /var/lib/backups/local.borg

With the above config in place:

syborg backup example

The "backup" subcommand is basically a wrapper around borg create/prune. If "mirrors" are defined, rclone will be used to copy the repository to a remote location (see syborg-example.cfg for a more complex config file that describes all features).

There are other borg wrappers too. For example, to check a repository:

syborg check rsyncnet -- --verbose --progress --verify-data

To mount a repository:

syborg mount rsyncnet /mnt

installation

sudo pip3 install syborg

To run as system service at specific times(recommended), copy syborg-backup@.service and syborg-example@.timer to /etc/systemd/system and enable for a specific backup job (which corresponds to a backup section in the config file). For the above config file that would be:

systemctl edit syborg@example.timer   # add the [Timer]/OnCalendar section
systemctl enable syborg@example.timer
systemctl start syborg@example.timer

A simpler choice is to use crontab:

@hourly /usr/bin/syborg backup example

An option to get passphrases from the current user is to use systemd-ask-password as BORG_PASSCOMMAND (see syborg-example.cfg). In this case, you probably want to install systemd-gtk-ask-password-agent to /usr/bin and systemd-gtk-ask-password-agent.desktop to /etc/xdg/autostart. These files implement a password agent and will ensure a gtk notification/dialog are presented when syborg requires a password.