Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BorgBackup 2 has no server-side append-only anymore

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–119 of 119 posts

Re: BorgBackup 2 has no server-side append-only anymore

#111

Post by omnimus »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #47
aborsy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restic is the winner. It talks directly to many backends, is a static binary (so you can drop the executable in operating systems which don’t allow package installation like a NAS OS) and has a clean CLI. Kopia is a bit newer and less tested. All three have a lot of commands to work with repositories. Each one of them is much better than closed source proprietary backup software that I have dealt with, like Synology…

Kopia is VERY similar to Restic, main differences is Kopia getting half decent UI vs Restic being a bit more friendly for scripting > If you want a better solution, the next level is ZFS. Not a backup. Not a bad choice for storage for backup server tho

But aren't ZFS snapshot replicas a backup? It seems that systems like TrueNAS went this way and you then don't need other solution.

Re: BorgBackup 2 has no server-side append-only anymore

#113

Post by snickerdoodle12 »

fl0id wrote: post #84
snickerdoodle12 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use restic+rclone+b2 with an api key that can't hard delete files. This gives me dirt-cheap effectively append-only object storage with automatic deletion of soft deleted backups after X days.

Which is exactly what the borg suggest in their issue.

It's a good strategy and much cheaper than having a VM that can run the server

Re: BorgBackup 2 has no server-side append-only anymore

#114

Post by dawnerd »

ThomasWaldmann wrote: post #96
dawnerd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a shame because the current version has had bugs that v2 supposedly fixed for a while.

Bugs? I don't know about any show-stoppers in borg 1.x. Design limitations? Yes, there are some, that's why borg2 will be quite different. But these are no easy or small changes. Also, borg2 will be a breaking release (offering borg transfer to copy existing archives from borg 1.x repos). It takes long because we try to put all breaking changes into borg2, so you won't have to transfer again too soon after borg2 rele…

Nothing really breaking but annoying, but I suppose you wouldn't even consider it a bug then.

For example, the file changed warning. That one ended up breaking my backup cron. I wasn't being notified (my fault there) and the rsync wasn't running. Caught it months later when I tried to run a test restore.

I'm fine with it returning a warning but people were asking for an option to suppress it and you said in 2022 it would be fixed in v2.

That's why it's disappointing. Appreciate the work though! Borg has definitely been a life safer and has recovered a failed production server already.

Re: BorgBackup 2 has no server-side append-only anymore

#115

Post by GCUMstlyHarmls »

liotier wrote: post #92
noAnswer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Borg since eight years and it has never let me down. Including a full 8TB disaster restore. It's super resilient to crashes. When I tested Restic (eight years ago) it was super slow. No opinion about Kopia, never heard of it.

Same here: my selection boiled down to Borg vs. Restic. I started with Restic because my friends used it and, while it was perfectly satisfactory functionally, found it unbearably slow with large backups. Changed to Borg and I've been happy everafter !

What is a "large" backup? Slow to backup locally or slow to backup over a network? (obviously you are not saying its slow without understanding the network is inherently slow, but more along the lines of maybe its network protocol is slow.)

Re: BorgBackup 2 has no server-side append-only anymore

#116

Post by unsnap_biceps »

twhb wrote: post #77
homebrewer wrote: post #9

For anyone looking to migrate off borg because of this, append-only is available in restic, but only with the rest-server backend: https://github.com/restic/restic https://github.com/restic/rest-server which has to be started with --append-only. I use this systemd unit: [Unit] After=network-online.target [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target [Service] ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/rest-server --path /mnt/backups --append-o…

restic’s rest-server append-only mode unfortunately doesn’t prevent data deletion under normal usage. More here: https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/stable/060_forget.html#secu... . Their workaround is pretty weak, in my opinion: a compromised client can still delete all your historic backups, and you’re on a tight timeline to notice and fix it before they can delete the rest of your backups, too.

That article says that a compromised client can not delete your historic backups, however, a compromised client could create enough garbage backups that an automatic job by an non-compromised administration account could delete them due to retention policies.

I'm not sure what exactly you expect that would be different?

Re: BorgBackup 2 has no server-side append-only anymore

#117

Post by liotier »

GCUMstlyHarmls wrote: post #115
liotier wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here: my selection boiled down to Borg vs. Restic. I started with Restic because my friends used it and, while it was perfectly satisfactory functionally, found it unbearably slow with large backups. Changed to Borg and I've been happy everafter !

What is a "large" backup? Slow to backup locally or slow to backup over a network? (obviously you are not saying its slow without understanding the network is inherently slow, but more along the lines of maybe its network protocol is slow.)

Those were only about 10 TB - home scale, and over SSH across 2 to 10 ms. I was coming from rdiff-backup, which satisfyingly saturated disk writes, whereas I didn't even understand what bottleneck restic was hitting.

Re: BorgBackup 2 has no server-side append-only anymore

#118

Post by seized »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #110
fc417fc802 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite expensive, but it should only ever be a last resort after your local backups have all failed in some way or another. For $1/mo/TB you purchase the opportunity to pay an exorbitant amount to recover from an otherwise catastrophic situation.

If you don't test your backups, they don't exist.

There is a free tier that accounts for testing, first 100GB of transfer out of AWS per month is free.

Re: BorgBackup 2 has no server-side append-only anymore

#119

Post by seized »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #45
seized wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glacier Deep Archive is the cheapest cloud backup option at $1USD/month/TB. Google Cloud Store Archive Tier is a tiny bit more.

Both would be pretty expensive to actually restore from, though, IIRC.

Yes, about $90USD per TB.

But I weigh that against data recovery from failed disks and the loss of the data I put in Glacier (family photos/etc). Then its dirt cheap.

Post reply on HN