borg import-tar¶

borg [common options] import-tar [options] ARCHIVE TARFILE

positional arguments
	`ARCHIVE`	name of archive to create (must be also a valid directory name)
	`TARFILE`	input tar file. “-” to read from stdin instead.
options
	`--tar-filter`	filter program to pipe data through
	`-s`, `--stats`	print statistics for the created archive
	`--list`	output verbose list of items (files, dirs, …)
	`--filter STATUSCHARS`	only display items with the given status characters
	`--json`	output stats as JSON (implies --stats)
	`--ignore-zeros`	ignore zero-filled blocks in the input tarball
Common options
Archive options
	`--comment COMMENT`	add a comment text to the archive
	`--timestamp TIMESTAMP`	manually specify the archive creation date/time (UTC, yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss format). alternatively, give a reference file/directory.
	`-c SECONDS`, `--checkpoint-interval SECONDS`	write checkpoint every SECONDS seconds (Default: 1800)
	`--chunker-params PARAMS`	specify the chunker parameters (ALGO, CHUNK_MIN_EXP, CHUNK_MAX_EXP, HASH_MASK_BITS, HASH_WINDOW_SIZE). default: buzhash,19,23,21,4095
	`-C COMPRESSION`, `--compression COMPRESSION`	select compression algorithm, see the output of the “borg help compression” command for details.

Description¶

This command creates a backup archive from a tarball.

When giving ‘-’ as path, Borg will read a tar stream from standard input.

By default (--tar-filter=auto) Borg will detect whether the file is compressed based on its file extension and pipe the file through an appropriate filter:

.tar.gz or .tgz: gzip -d
.tar.bz2 or .tbz: bzip2 -d
.tar.xz or .txz: xz -d
.tar.zstd or .tar.zst: zstd -d
.tar.lz4: lz4 -d

Alternatively, a --tar-filter program may be explicitly specified. It should read compressed data from stdin and output an uncompressed tar stream on stdout.

Most documentation of borg create applies. Note that this command does not support excluding files.

import-tar is a lossy conversion: BSD flags, ACLs, extended attributes (xattrs), atime and ctime are not exported. Timestamp resolution is limited to whole seconds, not the nanosecond resolution otherwise supported by Borg.

A --sparse option (as found in borg create) is not supported.

import-tar reads POSIX.1-1988 (ustar), POSIX.1-2001 (pax), GNU tar, UNIX V7 tar and SunOS tar with extended attributes.

To import multiple tarballs into a single archive, they can be simply concatenated (e.g. using “cat”) into a single file, and imported with an --ignore-zeros option to skip through the stop markers between them.

borg export-tar¶

borg [common options] export-tar [options] ARCHIVE FILE [PATH...]

positional arguments
	`ARCHIVE`	archive to export
	`FILE`	output tar file. “-” to write to stdout instead.
	`PATH`	paths to extract; patterns are supported
options
	`--tar-filter`	filter program to pipe data through
	`--list`	output verbose list of items (files, dirs, …)
Common options
Exclusion options
	`-e PATTERN`, `--exclude PATTERN`	exclude paths matching PATTERN
	`--exclude-from EXCLUDEFILE`	read exclude patterns from EXCLUDEFILE, one per line
	`--pattern PATTERN`	include/exclude paths matching PATTERN
	`--patterns-from PATTERNFILE`	read include/exclude patterns from PATTERNFILE, one per line
	`--strip-components NUMBER`	Remove the specified number of leading path elements. Paths with fewer elements will be silently skipped.

Description¶

This command creates a tarball from an archive.

When giving ‘-’ as the output FILE, Borg will write a tar stream to standard output.

By default (--tar-filter=auto) Borg will detect whether the FILE should be compressed based on its file extension and pipe the tarball through an appropriate filter before writing it to FILE:

.tar.gz or .tgz: gzip
.tar.bz2 or .tbz: bzip2
.tar.xz or .txz: xz
.tar.zstd or .tar.zst: zstd
.tar.lz4: lz4

Alternatively, a --tar-filter program may be explicitly specified. It should read the uncompressed tar stream from stdin and write a compressed/filtered tar stream to stdout.

The generated tarball uses the GNU tar format.

export-tar is a lossy conversion: BSD flags, ACLs, extended attributes (xattrs), atime and ctime are not exported. Timestamp resolution is limited to whole seconds, not the nanosecond resolution otherwise supported by Borg.

A --sparse option (as found in borg extract) is not supported.

By default the entire archive is extracted but a subset of files and directories can be selected by passing a list of PATHs as arguments. The file selection can further be restricted by using the --exclude option.

For more help on include/exclude patterns, see the borg help patterns command output.

--progress can be slower than no progress display, since it makes one additional pass over the archive metadata.

Examples¶

# export as uncompressed tar
$ borg export-tar /path/to/repo::Monday Monday.tar

# exclude some types, compress using gzip
$ borg export-tar /path/to/repo::Monday Monday.tar.gz --exclude '*.so'

# use higher compression level with gzip
$ borg export-tar --tar-filter="gzip -9" testrepo::linux Monday.tar.gz

# export a tar, but instead of storing it on disk,
# upload it to a remote site using curl.
$ borg export-tar /path/to/repo::Monday - | curl --data-binary @- https://somewhere/to/POST

# remote extraction via "tarpipe"
$ borg export-tar /path/to/repo::Monday - | ssh somewhere "cd extracted; tar x"