Import old repositories

Today there is no functionality dedicated to importing old BorgBackup repositories into BorgWarehouse.

This is not a priority feature because backups are variable data that evolve. So you can leave your old backups in place and start over in BorgWarehouse and then delete your old repositories once the retention time seems appropriate.

However, there are also archives (as cold storage) that you might want to move into BorgWarehouse. Although there is no dedicated import functionality it is possible to do this manually. Here are the steps for importing a BorgBackup repo into BorgWarehouse.

1 - Create your repository on BorgWarehouse #

Create a repository…

2 - Get the repo #

The easy way to get this informations in the BorgWarehouse interface :

3 - Transfer your data #

You are free to use the tool of your choice to transfer data from your old repository to the new one managed by BorgWarehouse.

You can for example use rsync like this :

rsync -raHv old-borg-repo borgwarehouse@borgwarehouse:/home/borgwarehouse/repos/REPOX/

Replace REPOX. In our example, REPOX would be 4e7f816e.

🚩 Be careful to transfer the right data to the right place. After a transfer, the data structure of your Borg repository inside /var/borgwarehouse/USER/repos/REPOX/ must be something like :

4 - Set files permissions #

You must set the permissions of the files and directories in your repository. All the files and directories must be owned by the user and group used to run the BorgWarehouse service. By default, this user is borgwarehouse.

chown -R borgwarehouse:borgwarehouse /home/borgwarehouse/repos/REPOX

Replace REPOX. In our example, REPOX would be 4e7f816e.

5 - Check your repo #

Now, go to step 3 “Launch & Verify” in Setup Wizard and select your repository into the list.

You have several choices to check your backups, ready-made commands to copy or a link to the BorgBackup documentation to go further :