Repository navigation
Wishlist: support PAX and BORG --tar-format in borg 1.4.x #7146
Description
Have you checked borgbackup docs, FAQ, and open Github issues?
Yes
Is this a BUG / ISSUE report or a QUESTION?
Feature request
System information. For client/server mode post info for both machines.
Your borg version (borg -V).
1.2.2
Operating system (distribution) and version.
Linux (Ubuntu 22.04, Manjaro, Armbian - debian)
Hardware / network configuration, and filesystems used.
Not relevant
How much data is handled by borg?
Not relevant
Full borg commandline that lead to the problem (leave away excludes and passwords)
Not relevant
Describe the problem you're observing.
Would like to condense here some discussion that happened in other issues/threads. Now that --tar-format has been merged in master with support for PAX and BORG formats (the last supporting lossless roundtrip), it would be great if a point release of borg 1.2.x could be made with these features.
Rationale:
- Borg 1.2.x is currently completely missing a lossless or way to move archives from repo to repo. Having
tar-format=BORGcould provide such support, even if in not in the efficient way planned for borg2. - Even if borg2 is in the working, it will probably still take time for it to come and then it will not likely immediately supersede borg 1.2.x in adoption and in some cases borg 1.2.x will be kept around for some time. Providing it with the ability to perform lossless export/import would be useful, and I hope not to expensive, being the feature already developed.
- At this point there are probably other fixes accumulated, so that a borg 1.2.3 is probably planned anyway.
Activity
ThomasWaldmann commentedon Nov 16, 2022
Just wanted to add here why for the migration from borg 1.x to borg 2 we did not choose the tar format to copy archives from old to new repos:
borg infoforall archivesis the relevant data volume that flows over the "tar pipe" / over this processing.So, overall it is a quite expensive processing for potentially a lot of data (N archives multiplied by archive size).
The BORG format is a rather low-level borg-version-dependent hack and will not be compatible from 1.x to 2.
callegar commentedon Nov 16, 2022
Thanks for the clarification!
That export+import is a rather expensive operation was clear to me. For the point:
Last point is quite interesting:
tar-format=borgwill be available in 1.2.x, so that my wishlist is going to be fulfilled! Great, thanks in advance!So I have a couple of questions:
ThomasWaldmann commentedon Nov 16, 2022
Well, I didn't want to say that it will be backported, that 1.2 to 2.0 was rather hypothetically meant.
PAX would be compatible as far as it is developed yet, but that is not much: it just adds the better timestamps and the general possibility for more metadata (but that is not used yet, except for that pax-based BORG format).
[-]Wishlist: support PAX and BORG `--tar-format` in borg 1.2.x[/-][+]Wishlist: support PAX and BORG `--tar-format` in borg 1.4.x[/+]ThomasWaldmann commentedon Sep 26, 2024
Updated title to "... in 1.4.x" - there won't be new features in 1.2.x at this time.
ThomasWaldmann commentedon Oct 11, 2026
#10500 is an experimental PR working on this (only supporting PAX, but not BORG mode).