This repository provides a Docker image for borgmatic, a simple and efficient backup tool based on Borgbackup. The image is designed to make it easy to set up and run borgmatic (with Borg and optionally Cron daemon) within a Docker container, enabling you to streamline your backup process and ensure the safety of your data.
Warning As of 2022-01-29 this image has switched to use Supercronic instead of cron from alpine
Warning As of 2023-06-23 msmtp and ntfy flavors have been discontinued. This image has now switched to apprise.
Before proceeding, ensure that you have Docker installed and properly configured on your system. Refer to the Docker documentation for installation instructions specific to your operating system. If you want to use docker-compose, you may also need to install it seperately. Alternatively, you can also use podman to run this image.
Run this command to create data directories required by this image under your prefered directory.
mkdir data/{borgmatic.d,repository,.config,.ssh,.cache}
Configure a copy of borgmatic's config.yaml in data/borgmatic.d and run the container. You can modify any of the host mount point to fit your backup configuration.
docker run \
--detach --name borgmatic \
-v /home:/mnt/source:ro \
-v ./data/repository:/mnt/borg-repository \
-v ./data/borgmatic.d:/etc/borgmatic.d/ \
-v ./data/.config/borg:/root/.config/borg \
-v ./data/.ssh:/root/.ssh \
-v ./data/.cache/borg:/root/.cache/borg \
-e TZ=Europe/Berlin \
ghcr.io/borgmatic-collective/borgmatic
See Other usage methods below for more options.
The following volumes are available for mounting:
| Volume | Description |
|---|---|
/mnt/source |
Your data you wish to backup. For some safety you may want to mount read-only. borgmatic is running as root so all files can be backed up. |
/mnt/borg-repository |
Mount your borg backup repository here. |
/etc/borgmatic.d |
Where you need to create crontab.txt and your borgmatic config.yml |
/root/.borgmatic |
Note this is now redundant and has been deprecated, please remove this from your configs |
/root/.config/borg |
Here the borg config and keys for keyfile encryption modes are stored. Make sure to backup your keyfiles! Also needed when encryption is set to none. |
/root/.ssh |
Mount either your own .ssh here or create a new one with ssh keys in for your remote repo locations. |
/root/.cache/borg |
A non-volatile place to store the borg chunk cache. |
To generate an example borgmatic configuration, run:
docker exec borgmatic \
bash -c "cd && borgmatic config generate -d /etc/borgmatic.d/config.yaml"
You can set the following environment variables:
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
TZ |
Time zone, e.g. TZ="Europe/Berlin"'. |
BORG_RSH |
SSH parameters, e.g. BORG_RSH="ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_ed25519 -p 50221" |
BORG_PASSPHRASE |
Repository passphrase, e.g. BORG_PASSPHRASE="DonNotMissToChangeYourPassphrase" |
BACKUP_CRON |
Cron schedule to run borgmatic. Default:0 1 * * * |
RUN_ON_STARTUP |
Run borgmatic on startup. e.g.: RUN_ON_STARTUP=true |
You can also provide your own crontab file. If data/borgmatic.d/crontab.txt exists, BACKUP_CRON will be ignored in preference to it. In here you can add any other tasks you want ran
0 1 * * * PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin /usr/bin/borgmatic --stats -v 0 2>&1
Beside that, you can also pass any environment variable that is supported by borgmatic. See documentation for borgmatic and Borg and for a list of supported variables.
You also have the option to use Docker Secrets for more sensitive information. This is not mandatory, but it adds an extra layer of security. Note that this feature is only applicable to environment variables starting with BORG.
For every environment variable like BORG_PASSPHRASE, you can create a corresponding secret file, named as BORG_PASSPHRASE_FILE. Place the content of the secret inside this file. The startup script will automatically look for corresponding _FILE secrets if the environment variables are not set and load them.
To enhance your experience with Borgmatic, we'll show you a quick example of how to use Apprise for notifications. Apprise is a versatile tool that integrates with a variety of services and is built into Borgmatic. With the upcoming version 1.8.4 also natively. Here's a quick example of how you can use Apprise.
In an unmodified Borgmatic installation, your cronjob.txt might look something like this:
0 1 * * * PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin /usr/local/bin/borgmatic --stats -v 0 2>&1
To incorporate Apprise notifications, you can modify it like this:
*/5 * * * * PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin /usr/local/bin/borgmatic --stats -v 0 > /tmp/backup_run.log
Add the following lines to your Borgmatic configuration file (config.yaml):
before_backup:
- echo "Starting a backup job."
after_backup:
- echo "Backup created."
- apprise -vv -t "✅ SUCCESS" -b "$(cat /tmp/backup_run.log)" "mailtos://smtp.example.com:[email protected]&pass=YourSecurePassword&[email protected]"
on_error:
- echo "Error while creating a backup."
- apprise -vv -t "❌ FAILED" -b "$(cat /tmp/backup_run.log)" "mailtos://smtp.example.com:[email protected]&pass=YourSecurePassword&[email protected]"If you don't want to send the log file, you can replace -b "$(cat /tmp/backup_run.log)" with a custom message like -b "My message".
Apprise offers a variety of services to send notifications to, such as Telegram, Slack, Discord, and many more. For a complete list, visit the Apprise GitHub page.
Apprise allows you to notify multiple services at the same time:
after_backup:
- echo "Backup created."
- apprise -vv -t "✅ SUCCESS" -b "$(cat /tmp/backup_run.log)" "mailto://smtp.example.com:[email protected]&pass=YourSecurePassword&[email protected],slack://token@Txxxx/Bxxxx/Cxxxx"Starting from version 1.8.4, Borgmatic has native support for Apprise within its configuration. This makes it even easier to set up notifications. Below is how you can add Apprise directly to your Borgmatic config.yaml.
apprise:
services:
- url: mailto://smtp.example.com:[email protected]&pass=YourSecurePassword&[email protected]
label: mail
- url: slack://token@Txxxx/Bxxxx/Cxxxx
label: slack
start:
title: ⚙️ Started
body: Starting backup process.
finish:
title: ✅ SUCCESS
body: Backups successfully made.
fail:
title: ❌ FAILED
body: Your backups have failed.And as of borgmatic 1.8.9+, borgmatic's logs are automatically appended to the body for each notification.
Apprise provides a flexible and powerful way to handle notifications in Borgmatic. Be sure to check out the official Apprise documentation for a full range of options and capabilities.
This image can be used to run borgmatic like a binary by passing the borgmatic command while running the container. It allows you to isolate your system and execute borgmatic commands without directly installing borgmatic on your host system and only keeping persistent data.
To execute borgmatic commands, you can run your container by passing borgmatic subcommands:
docker run --rm -it \
MOUNT_FLAGS_HERE \
ghcr.io/borgmatic-collective/borgmatic \
list
NOTE Replace MOUNT_FLAGS_HERE placeholder with appropriate mount flags and optionally environment flags. See above for more clues.
This will execute borgmatic list in your container. The idea is to create symlink to a script which executes this. Now create a new file borgmatic-docker.sh somewhere like your workspace or home directory.
#!/bin/sh
docker run --rm -it \
MOUNT_FLAGS_HERE \
ghcr.io/borgmatic-collective/borgmatic \
"$@"
Modify the above script as per your needs and copy it's path. Now you can either create a symbolic link to this script or add it as alias.
- Create a symlink to a directory that exists in your PATH variable e.g.:
chmod +x /path/to/script/borgmatic-docker.sh
sudo ln [-s] /path/to/script/borgmatic-docker.sh /usr/local/bin/borgmatic
- Or, to create an alias add this to your
~/.bashrcor similar file for other shells.
alias borgmatic="sh /path/to/script/borgmatic-docker.sh"
Tip You can view list of available command line options in borgmatic's docs
To keep the container always running for continous backup, you can run it in detached mode. If you do not pass the command, by default it'll start the cron daemon which will run borgmatic at interval set in crontab.txt file.
docker run -d --restart=always \
MOUNT_FLAGS_HERE \
ghcr.io/borgmatic-collective/borgmatic \
If you ever need to run borgmatic manually, for instance to view or recover files, run:
docker exec -it container_id_or_name bash
Then you can run borgmatic directly within that shell.
Use docker compose for easily management of your borgmatic container. You can also use this image with your existing docker-compose configuration to immediate setup backups for your deployed containers and/or the host.
- Copy
.env.templateto.envand edit it to your needs.
cp .env.template .env
You will need to configure environment variables for volumes. You can also directly configure docker-compose.yml file.
Beside these, you can also set other configuration variables in your .env file. See Environment section for more details.
- Start the container
docker-compose up -d
- To view logs
docker-compose logs -f
If you want to run borgmatic commands using this configuration instead of starting the container as daemon, you can run:
docker-compose run --rm borgmatic borgmatic list
If a container is already running, you can execute borgmatic commands in it by running:
docker-compose exec borgmatic ls
# or to run a shell
docker-compose exec borgmatic bash
- Stop the backup container:
docker-compose down - Modify volume
/host/mount/locationindocker-compose.restore.ymlfile to point to the location where you want to restore your backup. - Run an interactive shell:
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.restore.yml run borgmatic - Fuse-mount the backup:
borg mount /mnt/borg-repository <mount_point> - Restore your files
- Finally unmount and exit:
borg umount <mount_point> && exit.
Tip In case Borg fails to create/acquire a lock: borg break-lock /mnt/repository
In case you are using the container to backup docker volumes used by other containers, you might want to make sure that the data is consistent and doesn't change while the backup is running. The easiest way to ensure this is to stop the affected containers before the backup and restart them afterwards. You can use the appropriate borgmatic hooks and control the docker engine through the API using the hosts docker socket.
Please note that you might want to prefer the *_everything hooks to the *_backup hooks, as
after_backup will not run if the backup fails for any reason (missing disk space, etc.) and
therefore the containers stay stopped.
First mount the docker socket from the host by adding -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
to your run command or in the volume list of your docker-compose.yml.
Then use the following example to create the start/stop hooks in the config.yml for the containers
that you want to control.
hooks:
before_everything:
- echo "Stopping containers..."
- 'echo -ne "POST /v1.41/containers/<container1-name>/stop HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: localhost\r\n\r\n" | nc local:/var/run/docker.sock 80 > /dev/null && echo "Stopped Container 1" || echo "Failed to stop Container 1"'
- 'echo -ne "POST /v1.41/containers/<container2-name>/stop HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: localhost\r\n\r\n" | nc local:/var/run/docker.sock 80 > /dev/null && echo "Stopped Container 2" || echo "Failed to stop Container 2"'
- echo "Containers stopped."
- echo "Starting a backup."
after_everything:
- echo "Finished a backup."
- echo "Restarting containers..."
- 'echo -ne "POST /v1.41/containers/<container1-name>/start HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: localhost\r\n\r\n" | nc local:/var/run/docker.sock 80 > /dev/null && echo "Started Container 1" || echo "Failed to start Container 1"'
- 'echo -ne "POST /v1.41/containers/<container2-name>/start HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: localhost\r\n\r\n" | nc local:/var/run/docker.sock 80 > /dev/null && echo "Started Container 2" || echo "Failed to start Container 2"'
- echo "Containers restarted."While the parameters defined in above examples are sufficient for regular backups, following additional privileges will be needed to mount an archive as FUSE filesystem:
--cap-add SYS_ADMIN \
--device /dev/fuse \
--security-opt label:disable \
--security-opt apparmor:unconfined
Depending on your security system, --security-opt parameters may not be necessary. label:disable
is needed for SELinux, while apparmor:unconfined is needed for AppArmor.
To init the repo with encryption, run:
docker exec borgmatic \
bash -c "borgmatic --init --encryption repokey-blake2"
Backup Docker using borgmatic - Thank you @modem7