borg mount with a timeline

[henfri]

Hello,

I find it always a bit troublesome browsing  backups if the first entry of the directory tree is the date. It would be a lot nicer if one can browse the directory structure and at any place choose the date.

I understand that this is not possible when emulating a file system.

But: what about a command borg timemachine that opens a webserver at which one can pick the date that shall be used then one could browse the directory-structure and select -at any time- the data this would be time-machine like.

Regards, Hendrik

[ThomasWaldmann]

I suspect you mean the filesystem view given by borg mount repo.

borg 1.1 will have a "merged" view that does not have the top directory with the archive names, but has directories instead of files a bottom entries. In these directories, you see the different versions of the same file (e.g. 10 version files if the file is present in 10 borg archives).

Guess that would do what you want?

[henfri]

Hello Thomas,

thanks for the quick reply. Not quite, I fear. In principle, yes, that's a step in the right direction. But No, I then still cannot restore a directory structure.

I intend to browse the directory tree and have the time on an independent dimension (e.g. the slider, or a command that I give in the borg-mount-foreground window). This way, I could browse to a file that I know well, inspect it, see that it is already a corrupted version, jump to the previous (older) backup, inspect, ... until I find a version that is not corrupted.

Now I can restore (copy) the whole folder/folder structure.

Regards, Hendrik

[ThomasWaldmann]

Yes, it would not be super easy, but possible in 2 steps:

• identify the point in time you want to have - this can be done easily in the merged view via the timestamps on the version files
• re-mount using the normal view, find the right archive via correlating backup time and the timestamp time information found above and then restore the folder structure you want.

[enkore]

There's borg diff but it only compares two archives. Still, you could do a binary search at least.

[henfri]

Hello Thomas,

I am thinking of cases where I do not know the time at which the problem arose. I had this issue recently: The disc was full, a program tried to write a file. This resulted in a 0byte file. It took me a while to find the last file > 0byte.

In fact in this case, a ls -l /mnt/borg/*/path/to/file/in/my/structure would have done the trick. But if I had to look into the file, it would be more effort.

Also: I am thinking how my father in law could access/browse the structure from Windows. A smb mount of the borg mount folder would do, but still one has to browse always to the lowest folder to change the time.

That is why I suggest a different approach (the proposal you make is moving the 'time' dimension to the end of the path, today it is at the beginning).

I suggest NOT having the time in the path, but in a different mean, e.g. on the borg commandline in a webinterface.

Here you can see what I mean in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsOHMFV0Uug

Regards, Hendrik

[ThomasWaldmann]

Youtube video: yeah, that is a neat way to browse through time. this rather corresponds to our normal view with path-synchronized views at different points in time.

web interface: we don't have any real web interface, so this would be a major effort (and maybe only nice for viewing, not really for copying stuff).

command line: not sure if a command to move forwards/backwards in time on an existing mount is doable. also, usual file managers would not automatically refresh I guess? Or maybe even get into troubles if stuff suddenly vanishes?

[ThomasWaldmann]

guess we would need these:

• https://pythonhosted.org/llfuse/fuse_api.html#llfuse.invalidate_inode
• https://pythonhosted.org/llfuse/fuse_api.html#llfuse.invalidate_entry
• https://pythonhosted.org/llfuse/data.html#llfuse.EntryAttributes see entry_timeout / attr_timeout
• https://pythonhosted.org/llfuse/operations.html#llfuse.Operations.release
• https://pythonhosted.org/llfuse/operations.html#llfuse.Operations.releasedir

[fsironman]

I was trying out the new -o versions mount command and noticed that regardless if there are multiple or only one version in the repository it always shows the folder. If theres only one file version in the entire repository why bother with creating a subfolder.

Regarding the ability to browse the Backup repository on multiple version. The current implementation is useful to browse by file and get all existing version of it.

The same should be possible the other way round. Let me explain what I mean by that.

Lets say I have a Backup of the following file and two archives with a version of it.

/home/myimportantfile

myBackup1 01-01-2016 myBackup2 01-01-2017

Now I mount with -o version.

I can browse to /borg_mount/home/myimportantfile/ and have two files in there my_importantfile.fc730e10 and my_importantfile.de7e0ee9

It would be really helpful if as well you could go to /borg_mount/myBackup1/home/ and have myimportantfile in there and go to /borg_mount/myBackup2/home/ and have myimportantfile in there

this is probably what @henfri was referring to with the "slider"

As an example Obnams fuse mount does it like that (http://code.liw.fi/obnam/manual/obnam-manual.de.html#wiederherstellen-mit-fuse1)

[ThomasWaldmann]

It's to have no special cases. Always having a folder and 1..n versions in it is easier than specialcasing the 1 version case.

The way to mount archives in a subdir named like the archive name is the normal way borg mounts a repo if you do not use the "versions" option.

[fsironman]

Fair enough its probably easier to have only one case.

I´m aware that the mount issue is more a convenience one but nevertheless same as the versions mount its way easier beeing able to browse around the whole repository instead of having to mount each archive one by one.

In my Experience most cases where you actually need the Backup you also dont know exactly in which archive is what you want.

[ThomasWaldmann]

you can mount the whole repo, standard mode (not versions).

then you get to view all archives, each in its own toplevel directory.

[fsironman]

I rest my case I should have RTFM thx for your help ;)

[enkore]

Since it was only implied in the docs, I updated the mount examples to show each mode of operation.

https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage/mount.html#examples

[henfri]

Hello,

web interface: we don't have any real web interface, so this would be a major effort (and maybe only nice for viewing, not really for copying stuff).

command line: not sure if a command to move forwards/backwards in time on an existing mount is doable. also, usual file managers would not automatically refresh I guess? Or maybe even get into troubles if stuff suddenly vanishes?

The functionality I am after is the one in the video. This would really be unique in the linux world. I realize that it is hard to make this real, as there is an almost infinite number of file-managers in linux.

Also Borg does not have a GUI and thus there is no quick way to create a file-manager that is like the one in the video posted above.

Thus, my proposal to combine a small web interface (web interface because it is cross-platform and can be even used by a windows client (the actual data is provided via SMB) in which only the timeline-slider is available. So, the user would use his/her preferred file manager to browse in folders and copy/access the data AND the web-interface to browse in time.

With respect to filemanagers getting in trouble: Files can always vanish. Folders too. They should be prepared.

Greetings, Hendrik