[Borgbackup] What don't you like about Borg?

[Antoine Beaupré]

On 2016-10-20 10:39:33, Dave Cottingham wrote:
> My use of borg has been limited to testing and playing with it, so my
> comments may be ill informed.
>
> But the reason I haven't used it for my backups is the lack of multiple
> backends. ssh is great in principle, but when it comes to buying online
> space for the backups, none of the more affordable options do ssh.
>
> Perhaps a documented backend API would enable the user community to help
> out with this.

A while back, I have tried to document the inner workings of Attic
(later borg) in:

http://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/latest/internals.html

Arbitrary backend support is a hard problem, because the client-server
architecture of borg is deeply coupled with the borg internals. I have
looked at the RPC interface here:

https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/issues/102#issuecomment-145749103

And it's obvious to me there is a lot of "intelligence" on the
server-side, in fact, SSH is not merely a transport as much as a RPC
conduit to allow borg to call itself on the remote end.

See also:

https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/issues/1070

This is also a frustrating blocker for me: there are very cheap backups
providers out there that could be leveraged to provide virtually
unlimited, secure backups to borg. Backblaze, for example, has
ridiculous prices (50$/machine/year for unlimited backups, business
use). In comparison, rsync.net, which supports borg, is 2.40$/GB/year,
so you would get a measly 20GB a year with 50$...

On top of this one, the things missing from borg are, for me:

* a complete GUI (no restore, no desktop automation):
  https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/issues/314
* API stability commitment (there was a huge discussion about this, but
  it's still unclear if things will change under our feet, which makes
  it hard to commit to borg for larger deployments):
  https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/issues/26
* internationalization: https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/pull/305
* extensible snapshot support:
  https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/issues/983#issuecomment-222513148
* config files: https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/issues/315

See also this issue for a broader usability review:

https://github.com/borgbackup/borg/issues/326

I recently did consulting for a community group here and couldn't
honestly recommend using Borg because they would not be autonomous in
restoring their backups, because they are not familiar with the command
line. I am also worried about long-term stability for them and they
needed low-cost offsite backups (that means not having to manage a
server). Another example: in my previous job, config files, snapshot
support and API stability would have been the issues.

I still use borg for my personal use, but it would be great to push it
forward to a greater public. I know this is a huge commitment and that
brings a lot of support requests and further issues, but I believe the
benefits are worth it. I wish I would have the feeling I could
contribute to this within the borg project, but my efforts, so far, have
been mostly met with refusal.

A.

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