Howto: Using borg that is delivered with the flatpak build of Vorta

[goebbe]

The flatpak build of Vorta includes a binary of borg.
The following shows how to access and use this "included borg binary" from the command line.

Background: Vorta provides access to many features and options of borgbackup. However, sometimes executing borg commands directly can be useful, e.g. to access borg features that are not accessible via Vorta GUI.
Since a borg binary is included in the flatpak build of Vorta, it is not necessary to install another version of borg.
The following shows how to access and use this borg binary from the command line.

The examples have been tested on Linux Mint 22.1 with the flatpak build of Vorta 0.10.3 (from flathub) that includes borg 1.4.0. Note that by default, Linux Mint installs flatpak apps system-wide.

Useful commands:

1. Start flatpak Vorta from the command line:
   flatpak run com.borgbase.Vorta

2. Start borg that is included in the flatpak build of Vorta:
   flatpak run --command=borg com.borgbase.Vorta

3. Print the --version number of the included borg client binary:
   flatpak run --command=borg com.borgbase.Vorta --version

4. Export repo-key (to keep it in a save place, e.g. in your password manager, see issue add UI for borg key backup #1918):
   flatpak run --command=borg com.borgbase.Vorta key export /path/repo > ~/encrypted-repo-key-backup.txt
   for a remote backup, via ssh:
   flatpak run --command=borg com.borgbase.Vorta key export ssh://youruser@backupserver.org:22/~/path/repo > ~/encrypted-repo-key-backup.txt

5. Display the version of **borg client / borg server **
   flatpak run --command=borg com.borgbase.Vorta version ssh://youruser@backupserver.org:22/~/path/repo

6. Unlock a locked borg repository - if a backup is interrupted, in some cases the backup repository remains locked - and one cannot make a new backup to an (already) locked repository.
   (Use with caution - read the borg docs before you break the lock)
   flatpak run --command=borg com.borgbase.Vorta break-lock ssh://youruser@backupserver.org:22/~/path/repo

7. Delete a repository - use this borg command to delete a repository. borg delete will delete the repository and the corresponding security info and local borg-cache. Since the local borg-cache can be large, this may free a lot of disk-space.
   flatpak run --command=borg com.borgbase.Vorta delete ssh://youruser@backupserver.org:22/~/path/repo

If you are interested in the location of the borg binary that is delivered with the flatpak build, the following command might be helpful:
flatpak info --show-location com.borgbase.Vorta

Example: With a system-wide install, I got the following output for the location of Vorta:
/var/lib/flatpak/app/com.borgbase.Vorta/x86_64/stable/fb2545ad4c3e32bb8ced3e4e8ad66b6e656e24c7fbca5e7119c74e67e93f13a0

The included borg binary is in the files/bin/ subdirectory:
/var/lib/flatpak/app/com.borgbase.Vorta/x86_64/stable/fb2545ad4c3e32bb8ced3e4e8ad66b6e656e24c7fbca5e7119c74e67e93f13a0/files/bin/borg

User configuration files for the Vorta Flatpak are saved in ~/.var/app/com.borgbase.Vorta/

Feel free to comment or add more examples below.

[Jopp-gh]

I didn't see this thread in advance and so my script is a lil different. Also, this is my first attempt to call terminal options from a flatpak app:

flatpak run --command=/bin/env com.borgbase.Vorta borg mount $repoDir $mountDir

this command should mount your latest backup, just make sure to supply $repoDir (your backup repo) and $mountDir (where you wanna mount your backup). There's room for improvement, like adding the passphrase, but I didn't find out so far.