Borg Examine

This is an interactive python script for extracting files from borg backup repos. It is intended to help users who are not familiar with CLIs (my family) extract files from their backups without intervention as well as for anyone who wants a little interactive help digging through their backups. Current implementation stores repo password in clear text in a configuration file. If you are not comfortable with this, you can use key-based authorization (check borg's documentation for details).

Installation

Copy the repository to somewhere in your path and make borg_examine.py executable or reference it with a shell script. I may generate "binaries" at some point but not at the moment.

Configuration

Configuration is handled by a borg-examine.conf held in $HOME/.config/borg-examine/. You can edit the example provided or the script will help you created one interactively if it is not found. If your user does not have write access to the .config directory, it will raise an error. Change the ownership or permissions and it will work correctly.

Dependencies

• python3
• Borg Backup - deduplicating backup program
• I make use of the borg mount command so fuse support is required:
  • Linux: usually native, check your distro
  • macOS: install Fuse for macOS
• You will also need the python3 llfuse package. Can be installed with pip3 install llfuse NOTE: This package will not install if your system does not have fuse support.

Usage

Currently the script presents the user with the times of all available backups and mounts the selected one. You can then copy out any files you need and it will unmount the backup at exit (as long as it closes cleanly). If the wrong backup is mounted it can run continuously unmounting and mounting backups until the user is finished. It is written to be mostly self-explanatory.

NOTE: It is not advisable to run this script as root. It may look in the root home directory for a config file and when it mounts the backup, your user will not be able to access it without elevating privileges and files copied out may have permission issues as well. If you MUST run it as root, consider becoming root with su - or sudo -s instead of just running the script with sudo, just don't break anything.