How to upgrade borgmatic


In general, all you should need to do to upgrade borgmatic is run the following:

sudo pip3 install --user --upgrade borgmatic

See below about special cases with old versions of borgmatic. Additionally, if you installed borgmatic without using pip3 install --user, then your upgrade process may be different.

Upgrading your configuration

The borgmatic configuration file format is almost always backwards-compatible from release to release without any changes, but you may still want to update your configuration file when you upgrade to take advantage of new configuration options. This is completely optional. If you prefer, you can add new configuration options manually.

If you do want to upgrade your configuration file to include new options, use the generate-borgmatic-config script with its optional --source flag that takes the path to your original configuration file. If provided with this path, generate-borgmatic-config merges your original configuration into the generated configuration file, so you get all the newest options and comments.

Here's an example:

generate-borgmatic-config --source config.yaml --destination config-new.yaml

New options start as commented out, so you can edit the file and decide whether you want to use each one.

There are a few caveats to this process. First, when generating the new configuration file, generate-borgmatic-config replaces any comments you've written in your original configuration file with the newest generated comments. Second, the script adds back any options you had originally deleted, although it does so with the options commented out. And finally, any YAML includes you've used in the source configuration get flattened out into a single generated file.

As a safety measure, generate-borgmatic-config refuses to modify configuration files in-place. So it's up to you to review the generated file and, if desired, replace your original configuration file with it.

Upgrading from borgmatic 1.0.x

borgmatic changed its configuration file format in version 1.1.0 from INI-style to YAML. This better supports validation, and has a more natural way to express lists of values. To upgrade your existing configuration, first upgrade to the new version of borgmatic.

As of version 1.1.0, borgmatic no longer supports Python 2. If you were already running borgmatic with Python 3, then you can upgrade borgmatic in-place:

sudo pip3 install --user --upgrade borgmatic

But if you were running borgmatic with Python 2, uninstall and reinstall instead:

sudo pip uninstall borgmatic
sudo pip3 install --user borgmatic

The pip binary names for different versions of Python can differ, so the above commands may need some tweaking to work on your machine.

Once borgmatic is upgraded, run:

sudo upgrade-borgmatic-config

That will generate a new YAML configuration file at /etc/borgmatic/config.yaml (by default) using the values from both your existing configuration and excludes files. The new version of borgmatic will consume the YAML configuration file instead of the old one.

Upgrading from atticmatic

You can ignore this section if you're not an atticmatic user (the former name of borgmatic).

borgmatic only supports Borg now and no longer supports Attic. So if you're an Attic user, consider switching to Borg. See the Borg upgrade command for more information. Then, follow the instructions above about setting up your borgmatic configuration files.

If you were already using Borg with atticmatic, then you can upgrade from atticmatic to borgmatic by running the following commands:

sudo pip3 uninstall atticmatic
sudo pip3 install --user borgmatic

That's it! borgmatic will continue using your /etc/borgmatic configuration files.

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