# Installation

There are different ways to install Borg:

- Distribution Package - easy and fast if a package is available from your distribution.

- Standalone Binary - easy and fast, we provide a ready-to-use binary file that comes bundled with all dependencies.

- From Source, either:

  - Using pip - installing a source package with pip needs more installation steps and requires all dependencies with development headers and a compiler.

  - Using git - for developers and power users who want to have the latest code or use revision control (each release is tagged).

## Distribution Package

Some distributions might offer a ready-to-use `borgbackup` package which can be installed with the package manager.

Important

Those packages may not be up to date with the latest Borg releases. Before submitting a bug report, check the package version and compare that to our latest release then review Important notes to see if the bug has been fixed. Report bugs to the package maintainer rather than directly to Borg if the package is out of date in the distribution.

Distribution | Source | Command
--- | --- | ---
Alpine Linux | Alpine repository | `apk add borgbackup`
Arch Linux | [extra] | `pacman -S borg`
Debian | Debian packages | `apt install borgbackup`
Gentoo | ebuild | `emerge borgbackup`
GNU Guix | GNU Guix | `guix package --install borg`
Fedora/RHEL | Fedora official repository | `dnf install borgbackup`
FreeBSD | FreeBSD ports | `cd /usr/ports/archivers/py-borgbackup && make install clean`
macOS | Homebrew | `brew install borgbackup` (official formula, no FUSE support) or `brew install --cask macfuse` (private Tap, FUSE support) `brew install borgbackup/tap/borgbackup-fuse`
Mageia | cauldron | `urpmi borgbackup`
NetBSD | pkgsrc | `pkg_add py-borgbackup`
NixOS | .nix file | `nix-env -i borgbackup`
OpenBSD | OpenBSD ports | `pkg_add borgbackup`
OpenIndiana | OpenIndiana hipster repository | `pkg install borg`
openSUSE | openSUSE official repository | `zypper in borgbackup`
Raspbian | Raspbian testing | `apt install borgbackup`
Ubuntu | Ubuntu packages, Ubuntu PPA | `apt install borgbackup`

Please ask package maintainers to build a package or, if you can package / submit it yourself, please help us with that! See #105 on github to followup on packaging efforts.

Current status of package in the repositories

## Standalone Binary

Note

Releases are signed with an OpenPGP key, see Security for more instructions.

Borg x86-64 amd/intel compatible binaries (generated with pyinstaller) are available on the releases page for the following platforms (for more details see the `00_README.txt` file there):

- Linux

- FreeBSD

- MacOS

ARM binaries are built by Johann Bauer, see: https://borg.bauerj.eu/

To install such a binary, just drop it into a directory in your `PATH`, make borg readable and executable for its users and then you can run `borg`:

    sudo cp borg-linux /usr/local/bin/borg
    sudo chown root:root /usr/local/bin/borg
    sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/borg

Optionally you can create a symlink to have `borgfs` available, which is an alias for `borg mount`:

    ln -s /usr/local/bin/borg /usr/local/bin/borgfs

Note that the binary uses /tmp to unpack Borg with all dependencies. It will fail if /tmp has not enough free space or is mounted with the `noexec` option. You can change the temporary directory by setting the `TEMP` environment variable before running Borg.

If a new version is released, you will have to manually download it and replace the old version using the same steps as shown above.

## From Source

Note

Some older Linux systems (like RHEL/CentOS 5) and Python interpreter binaries compiled to be able to run on such systems (like Python installed via Anaconda) might miss functions required by Borg.

This issue will be detected early and Borg will abort with a fatal error.

### Dependencies

To install Borg from a source package (including pip), you have to install the following dependencies first:

- Python 3 >= 3.9.0, plus development headers.

- OpenSSL >= 1.0.0, plus development headers.

- libacl (which depends on libattr), both plus development headers.

- We have bundled code of the following packages, but borg by default (see setup.py if you want to change that) prefers a shared library if it can be found on the system (lib + dev headers) at build time:

  - liblz4 >= 1.7.0 (r129)

  - libzstd >= 1.3.0

  - libxxhash >= 0.8.1 (0.8.0 might work also)

- pkg-config (cli tool) and pkgconfig python package (borg uses these to discover header and library location - if it can’t import pkgconfig and is not pointed to header/library locations via env vars [see setup.py], it will fall back to using the bundled code, see above). These must be present before invoking setup.py!

- some other Python dependencies, pip will automatically install them for you.

- optionally, if you wish to mount an archive as a FUSE filesystem, you need a FUSE implementation for Python:

  - Either pyfuse3 (preferably, newer and maintained) or llfuse (older, unmaintained now). See also the BORG_FUSE_IMPL env variable.

  - See pyproject.toml about the version requirements.

If you have troubles finding the right package names, have a look at the distribution specific sections below or the Vagrantfile in the git repository, which contains installation scripts for a number of operating systems.

In the following, the steps needed to install the dependencies are listed for a selection of platforms. If your distribution is not covered by these instructions, try to use your package manager to install the dependencies. On FreeBSD, you may need to get a recent enough OpenSSL version from FreeBSD ports.

After you have installed the dependencies, you can proceed with steps outlined under Using pip.

#### Debian / Ubuntu

Install the dependencies with development headers:

    sudo apt-get install python3 python3-dev python3-pip python3-virtualenv \
    libacl1-dev libacl1 \
    libssl-dev \
    liblz4-dev libzstd-dev libxxhash-dev \
    build-essential \
    pkg-config python3-pkgconfig
    sudo apt-get install libfuse-dev fuse    # needed for llfuse
    sudo apt-get install libfuse3-dev fuse3  # needed for pyfuse3

In case you get complaints about permission denied on `/etc/fuse.conf`: on Ubuntu this means your user is not in the `fuse` group. Add yourself to that group, log out and log in again.

#### Fedora

Install the dependencies with development headers:

    sudo dnf install python3 python3-devel python3-pip python3-virtualenv \
    libacl-devel libacl \
    openssl-devel \
    lz4-devel libzstd-devel xxhash-devel \
    pkgconf python3-pkgconfig
    sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ redhat-rpm-config
    sudo dnf install fuse-devel fuse         # needed for llfuse
    sudo dnf install fuse3-devel fuse3       # needed for pyfuse3

#### openSUSE Tumbleweed / Leap

Install the dependencies automatically using zypper:

    sudo zypper source-install --build-deps-only borgbackup

Alternatively, you can enumerate all build dependencies in the command line:

    sudo zypper install python3 python3-devel \
    libacl-devel openssl-devel \
    libxxhash-devel \
    python3-Cython python3-Sphinx python3-msgpack-python python3-pkgconfig pkgconf \
    python3-pytest python3-setuptools python3-setuptools_scm \
    python3-sphinx_rtd_theme gcc gcc-c++
    sudo zypper install python3-llfuse  # llfuse

#### macOS

When installing borgbackup via Homebrew, the basic dependencies are installed automatically.

For FUSE support to mount the backup archives, you need macFUSE, which is available via github, or Homebrew:

    brew install --cask macfuse

When installing Borg via `pip`, be sure to install the `llfuse` extra, since macFUSE only supports FUSE API v2. Also, since Homebrew won’t link the installed `openssl` formula, point pkg-config to the correct path:

    PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/local/opt/openssl@1.1/lib/pkgconfig" pip install borgbackup[llfuse]

When working from a borg git repo workdir, you can install dependencies using the Brewfile:

    brew install python@3.11  # can be any supported python3 version
    brew bundle install  # install requirements from borg repo's ./Brewfile
    pip3 install virtualenv pkgconfig

Be aware that for all recent macOS releases you must authorize full disk access. It is no longer sufficient to run borg backups as root. If you have not yet granted full disk access, and you run Borg backup from cron, you will see messages such as:

    /Users/you/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary: scandir: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted:

To fix this problem, you should grant full disk access to cron, and to your Terminal application. More information can be found here.

#### FreeBSD

Listed below are packages you will need to install Borg, its dependencies, and commands to make FUSE work for using the mount command.

    pkg install -y python3 pkgconf
    pkg install openssl
    pkg install liblz4 zstd xxhash
    pkg install fusefs-libs  # needed for llfuse
    pkg install -y git
    python3 -m ensurepip # to install pip for Python3
    To use the mount command:
    echo 'fuse_load="YES"' >> /boot/loader.conf
    echo 'vfs.usermount=1' >> /etc/sysctl.conf
    kldload fuse
    sysctl vfs.usermount=1

#### Windows 10’s Linux Subsystem

Note

Running under Windows 10’s Linux Subsystem is experimental and has not been tested much yet.

Just follow the Ubuntu Linux installation steps. You can omit the FUSE stuff, it won’t work anyway.

#### Cygwin

Note

Running under Cygwin is experimental and has not been tested much yet.

Use the Cygwin installer to install the dependencies:

    python39 python39-devel python39-pkgconfig
    python39-setuptools python39-pip python39-wheel python39-virtualenv
    libssl-devel libxxhash-devel liblz4-devel libzstd-devel
    binutils gcc-g++ git make openssh

### Using pip

Ensure to install the dependencies as described within From Source.

Virtualenv can be used to build and install Borg without affecting the system Python or requiring root access. Using a virtual environment is optional, but recommended except for the most simple use cases.

Note

If you install into a virtual environment, you need to activate it first (`source borg-env/bin/activate`), before running `borg`. Alternatively, symlink `borg-env/bin/borg` into some directory that is in your `PATH` so you can just run `borg`.

This will use `pip` to install the latest release from PyPi:

    virtualenv --python=python3 borg-env
    source borg-env/bin/activate

    # might be required if your tools are outdated
    pip install -U pip setuptools wheel

    # pkgconfig MUST be available before borg is installed!
    pip install pkgconfig

    # install Borg + Python dependencies into virtualenv
    pip install borgbackup
    # or alternatively (if you want FUSE support):
    pip install borgbackup[llfuse]  # to use llfuse
    pip install borgbackup[pyfuse3]  # to use pyfuse3

To upgrade Borg to a new version later, run the following after activating your virtual environment:

    pip install -U borgbackup  # or ... borgbackup[llfuse/pyfuse3]

When doing manual pip installation, man pages are not automatically installed. You can run these commands to install the man pages locally:

    # get borg from github
    git clone https://github.com/borgbackup/borg.git borg

    # Install the files with proper permissions
    install -D -m 0644 borg/docs/man/borg*.1* $HOME/.local/share/man/man1/borg.1

    # Update the man page cache
    mandb

### Using git

Ensure to install the dependencies as described within From Source.

This uses latest, unreleased development code from git. While we try not to break master, there are no guarantees on anything.

    # get borg from github
    git clone https://github.com/borgbackup/borg.git

    # create a virtual environment
    virtualenv --python=$(which python3) borg-env
    source borg-env/bin/activate   # always before using!

    # install borg + dependencies into virtualenv
    cd borg
    pip install -r requirements.d/development.txt
    pip install -r requirements.d/docs.txt  # optional, to build the docs

    pip install -e .           # in-place editable mode
    or
    pip install -e .[pyfuse3]  # in-place editable mode, use pyfuse3
    or
    pip install -e .[llfuse]   # in-place editable mode, use llfuse

    # optional: run all the tests, on all installed Python versions
    # requires fakeroot, available through your package manager
    fakeroot -u tox --skip-missing-interpreters

By default the system installation of python will be used. If you need to use a different version of Python you can install this using `pyenv`:

    ...
    # create a virtual environment
    pyenv install 3.9.0  # minimum, preferably use something more recent!
    pyenv global 3.9.0
    pyenv local 3.9.0
    virtualenv --python=${pyenv which python} borg-env
    source borg-env/bin/activate   # always before using!
    ...

Note

As a developer or power user, you always want to use a virtual environment.