borg/docs/usage/create.rst.inc

.. _borg_create:

borg create
-----------
::

    borg create <options> ARCHIVE PATH

positional arguments
    ARCHIVE
        name of archive to create (must be also a valid directory name)
    PATH
        paths to archive

optional arguments
    ``-n``, ``--dry-run``
        | do not create a backup archive
    ``-s``, ``--stats``
        | print statistics for the created archive
    ``-p``, ``--progress``
        | show progress display while creating the archive, showing Original, Compressed and Deduplicated sizes, followed by the Number of files seen and the path being processed, default: False
    ``--list``
        | output verbose list of items (files, dirs, ...)
    ``--filter STATUSCHARS``
        | only display items with the given status characters

`Common options`_
    |

Exclusion options
    ``-e PATTERN``, ``--exclude PATTERN``
        | exclude paths matching PATTERN
    ``--exclude-from EXCLUDEFILE``
        | read exclude patterns from EXCLUDEFILE, one per line
    ``--exclude-caches``
        | exclude directories that contain a CACHEDIR.TAG file (http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/spec.html)
    ``--exclude-if-present FILENAME``
        | exclude directories that contain the specified file
    ``--keep-tag-files``
        | keep tag files of excluded caches/directories

Filesystem options
    ``-x``, ``--one-file-system``
        | stay in same file system, do not cross mount points
    ``--numeric-owner``
        | only store numeric user and group identifiers
    ``--ignore-inode``
        | ignore inode data in the file metadata cache used to detect unchanged files.
    ``--read-special``
        | open and read special files as if they were regular files

Archive options
    ``--comment COMMENT``
        | add a comment text to the archive
    ``--timestamp yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss``
        | manually specify the archive creation date/time (UTC). alternatively, give a reference file/directory.
    ``-c SECONDS``, ``--checkpoint-interval SECONDS``
        | write checkpoint every SECONDS seconds (Default: 300)
    ``--chunker-params CHUNK_MIN_EXP,CHUNK_MAX_EXP,HASH_MASK_BITS,HASH_WINDOW_SIZE``
        | specify the chunker parameters. default: 19,23,21,4095
    ``-C COMPRESSION``, ``--compression COMPRESSION``
        | select compression algorithm (and level):
        | none == no compression (default),
        | lz4 == lz4,
        | zlib == zlib (default level 6),
        | zlib,0 .. zlib,9 == zlib (with level 0..9),
        | lzma == lzma (default level 6),
        | lzma,0 .. lzma,9 == lzma (with level 0..9).

Description
~~~~~~~~~~~

This command creates a backup archive containing all files found while recursively
traversing all paths specified. The archive will consume almost no disk space for
files or parts of files that have already been stored in other archives.

The archive name needs to be unique. It must not end in '.checkpoint' or
'.checkpoint.N' (with N being a number), because these names are used for
checkpoints and treated in special ways.

In the archive name, you may use the following format tags:
{now}, {utcnow}, {fqdn}, {hostname}, {user}, {pid}

To speed up pulling backups over sshfs and similar network file systems which do
not provide correct inode information the --ignore-inode flag can be used. This
potentially decreases reliability of change detection, while avoiding always reading
all files on these file systems.

See the output of the "borg help patterns" command for more help on exclude patterns.