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configuring-playbook-backup-borg.md

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Setting up BorgBackup (optional)

The playbook can install and configure BorgBackup (short: Borg) with borgmatic for you.

BorgBackup is a deduplicating backup program with optional compression and encryption. That means your daily incremental backups can be stored in a fraction of the space and is safe whether you store it at home or on a cloud service.

You will need a remote server where BorgBackup will store the backups. There are hosted, BorgBackup compatible solutions available, such as BorgBase.

The backup will run based on backup_borg_schedule var (systemd timer calendar), default: 4am every day.

By default, if you're using the integrated Postgres database server (as opposed to an external Postgres server), backups with BorgBackup will also include dumps of your Postgres database. An alternative solution for backing up the Postgres database is postgres backup. If you decide to go with another solution, you can disable Postgres-backup support for BorgBackup using the backup_borg_postgresql_enabled variable.

Note: the component is not managed by this repository but its own repository.

Prerequisites

  1. If you do not disable Postgres-backup support, make sure that the Postgres version of your homeserver's database is compatible with borgmatic.

  2. Create a new SSH key:

    ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -N '' -f matrix-borg-backup -C matrix

    This can be done on any machine and you don't need to place the key in the .ssh folder. It will be added to the Ansible config later.

  3. Add the public part of this SSH key (the matrix-borg-backup.pub file) to your BorgBackup provider/server:

    If you plan to use a hosted solution, follow their instructions. If you have your own server, copy the key over:

    # example to append the new PUBKEY contents, where:
# PUBKEY is path to the public key,
# USER is a ssh user on a provider / server
# HOST is a ssh host of a provider / server
cat PUBKEY | ssh USER@HOST 'dd of=.ssh/authorized_keys oflag=append conv=notrunc'

Adjusting the playbook configuration

Minimal working configuration (inventory/host_vars/matrix.example.com/vars.yml) to enable BorgBackup:

backup_borg_enabled: true
backup_borg_location_repositories:
 - ssh://USER@HOST/./REPO
backup_borg_storage_encryption_passphrase: "PASSPHRASE"
backup_borg_ssh_key_private: |
  -----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----
  TG9yZW0gaXBzdW0gZG9sb3Igc2l0IGFtZXQsIGNvbnNlY3RldHVyIGFkaXBpc2NpbmcgZW
  xpdCwgc2VkIGRvIGVpdXNtb2QgdGVtcG9yIGluY2lkaWR1bnQgdXQgbGFib3JlIGV0IGRv
  bG9yZSBtYWduYSBhbGlxdWEuIFV0IGVuaW0gYWQgbWluaW0gdmVuaWFtLCBxdWlzIG5vc3
  RydWQgZXhlcmNpdGF0aW9uIHVsbGFtY28gbGFib3JpcyBuaXNpIHV0IGFsaXF1aXAgZXgg
  ZWEgY29tbW9kbyBjb25zZXF1YXQuIA==
  -----END OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----

where:

  • USER - SSH user of a provider/server
  • HOST - SSH host of a provider/server
  • REPO - BorgBackup repository name, it will be initialized on backup start, eg: matrix, regarding Syntax see Remote repositories
  • PASSPHRASE - passphrase used for encrypting backups, you may generate it with pwgen -s 64 1 or use any password manager
  • PRIVATE KEY - the content of the private part of the SSH key you created before. The whole key (all of its belonging lines) under backup_borg_ssh_key_private needs to be indented with 2 spaces

To backup without encryption, add backup_borg_encryption: 'none' to your vars. This will also enable the backup_borg_unknown_unencrypted_repo_access_is_ok variable.

backup_borg_location_source_directories defines the list of directories to back up: it's set to {{ matrix_base_data_path }} by default, which is the base directory for every service's data, such as Synapse, Postgres and the bridges. You might want to exclude certain directories or file patterns from the backup using the backup_borg_location_exclude_patterns variable.

Check the backup_borg role's defaults/main.yml file for the full list of available options.

Installing

After configuring the playbook, run it with playbook tags as below:

ansible-playbook -i inventory/hosts setup.yml --tags=setup-all,start

The shortcut commands with the just program are also available: just install-all or just setup-all

just install-all is useful for maintaining your setup quickly (2x-5x faster than just setup-all) when its components remain unchanged. If you adjust your vars.yml to remove other components, you'd need to run just setup-all, or these components will still remain installed. Note these shortcuts run the ensure-matrix-users-created tag too.

Manually start a backup

For testing your setup it can be helpful to not wait until 4am. If you want to run the backup immediately, log onto the server and run systemctl start matrix-backup-borg. This will not return until the backup is done, so possibly a long time. Consider using tmux if your SSH connection is unstable.