Merging multiple repo's into one.

[Waldorf3]

I have multiple repos that I'd like to merge into one. I saw there has been work on a "borg transfer" option that might accomplish this, but it appears to only be available with borg2.

Anyone has a good idea how I can do this with borg 1.2.4 ?

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

I believe tar Import/Export may be used as an appropriate, xattrs/acl may not transfer

[Waldorf3]

Thanks, but I don't quite understand how, could you perhaps elaborate?

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

Please take a look at the documentation on tar

The import and export command's can be used to export a repo to a tarfile, and directly streaming that into a import to the other repo

[Waldorf3]

Ok, now I am with you. "borg export-tar" / "borg import-tar". I thought you meant tar(1).

How does that deal with multiple archives? Is it not just "borg extract" going to a tar file insted of to a filesystem?

[RonnyPfannschmidt]

You need to run it on all of them one by one

[Waldorf3]

Something like this, or am I completely lost?

for REPO in 100 101 102 103 ...
do
  for ARCH in $(borg list --short $REPO)
  do
    borg export-tar $REPO::$ARCH - | borg import-tar new-repo
  done
done

[ThomasWaldmann]

Looks quite ok.

Just try it with a single repo and archive, then use borg list (and maybe also borg extract) on original and new archive location to check whether it is what you wanted.

Also, be aware that this is a potentially lossy operation (as ronny has already pointed out), some metadata might be missing due to limitations in tar format and in borg's tar-export/tar-import implementation.

[Waldorf3]

Actually the code should be
borg export-tar $REPO::$ARCH - | borg import-tar new-repo::new-arch -

However, it is very slow, transferring only 2 GB per minute, so a 1 TB transfer/conversion would take over 8 hours, so I'm going to pass on this idea. I'll probably just discontinue the repo and start a new, then prune the old repo as the new repo gets filled.

[ThomasWaldmann]

Closing this as outdated: it has seen no activity for a long time and predates the current borg releases.

If this still affects you on a current version - borg 1.4.x (stable) or the borg 2.0.0 beta - please open a new discussion with up-to-date details.