I have gone from an rsync-based backup system to a borg-based one. I now have a Raspberry Pi-based server that will live on my LAN in another building, and I have a pair of HDDs I’ll use locally. I’ll plug one in for a week, and then swap to the other, that way I’ve got backups in cold storage should some uncouth jabronie write a ransomware virus for Linux.
The coolest part is the backup software checks to see if the drive is mounted, if the drive is attached but not mounted, it mounts it, and if it can’t do that it fails gracefully. Still doing a bit of polish but so far it’s working okay.
Okay so BorgBackup is a CLI tool, I think for Linux and MacOS. There are GUI front-ends like Pika and Vorta.
Compared to Rsync, which makes a 1 to 1 copy of a section of your Unix file system and then makes incremental backups by hard linking unchanged files, Borg cuts your data into chunks, de-duplicates it (imagine you’ve got three Linux Mint install ISOs, there are probably hunks of them that are identical, it only stores one copy and makes note where it goes, saving space) compresses and encrypts it. Your thoroughly blenderized data is then stored in an archive, which can be on a remote server (the server has to run the borg software, and they communicate over SSH) or on locally mounted storage, I’m doing both.
For reference, I’ve been in the Linux administration industry for … Uh, I think nineteen years professionally? It’s expired now, but I was an RHCE back when that was moderately meaningful. I am familiar with the concepts, just had only barely heard of the tool.
I mostly was hoping to make someone laugh with my misconstruement of the classic catchphrase.
Thank you for the explanations though!