[Borgbackup] Newbie questions

[Thomas Waldmann]

> I have two questions that I don't seem able to find in the docs.

Maybe read them again, also the FAQ part. Some stuff you asked is
answered there.

> What is the difference between running Borg backup with the repo on an
> external hard drive vs the repo on a server?

Borg can write to a repo on a locally mounted filesystem or (via its
client/server mode that usually uses ssh as a transport to talk to
another remote borg process) via network to a repo on a (potentially
remote) server.

Of course you can also locally mount a network filesystem that stores on
a remote server, e.g. sshfs.

The difference to the client/server mode is that the latter has a borg
process running on the repo server while with the network filesystem,
the borg client only can do fs operations and has no agent (borg
process) running on the repo server, so EVERY operation needs to go over
the network fs, which is slower.

> I thought in both cases
> Borg runs on the local machine, does its work and updates the repo,
> whether the repo resides on a drive or a server.

Yes, but in the client/server case, there is another borg process
running on the repo server.

> The reason I ask is
> that servers hosting Borg backup have Borg software running on them and
> I don't understand what the server specific Borg software does.

The server side process is doing storage-related low-level repo
operations (get, put, commit, check, compact).

The client side does the high-level stuff: deduplication, encryption,
compression, dealing with archives, backups, restores, etc.

> Is there a problem with two or more local machines using the same repo?

Yes and no, see FAQ.

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