borgmatic/docs/how-to/inspect-your-backups.md
2019-11-02 12:54:03 -07:00

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How to inspect your backups

Backup progress

By default, borgmatic runs proceed silently except in the case of errors. But if you'd like to to get additional information about the progress of the backup as it proceeds, use the verbosity option:

borgmatic --verbosity 1

This lists the files that borgmatic is archiving, which are those that are new or changed since the last backup.

Or, for even more progress and debug spew:

borgmatic --verbosity 2

Backup summary

If you're less concerned with progress during a backup, and you only want to see the summary of archive statistics at the end, you can use the stats option when performing a backup:

borgmatic --stats

Existing backups

borgmatic provides convenient actions for Borg's list and info functionality:

borgmatic list
borgmatic info

(No borgmatic list or info actions? Try the old-style --list or --info. Or upgrade borgmatic!)

Logging

By default, borgmatic logs to a local syslog-compatible daemon if one is present and borgmatic is running in a non-interactive console. Where those logs show up depends on your particular system. If you're using systemd, try running journalctl -xe. Otherwise, try viewing /var/log/syslog or similiar.

You can customize the log level used for syslog logging with the --syslog-verbosity flag, and this is independent from the console logging --verbosity flag described above. For instance, to get additional information about the progress of the backup as it proceeds:

borgmatic --syslog-verbosity 1

Or to increase syslog logging to include debug spew:

borgmatic --syslog-verbosity 2

Logging to file

If you don't want to use syslog, and you'd rather borgmatic log to a plain file, use the --log-file flag:

borgmatic --log-file /path/to/file.log

Note that if you use the --log-file flag, you are responsible for rotating the log file so it doesn't grow too large. Also, there is a --log-file-verbosity flag to customize the log file's log level.

systemd journal

If your local syslog daemon is systemd's journal, be aware that journald by default throttles the rate at which a particular program can log. So you may need to change the journald rate limit in /etc/systemd/journald.conf if you're finding that borgmatic journald logs are missing.

Note that the sample borgmatic systemd service file already has this rate limit disabled.