# 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 Report bugs to the package maintainer rather than directly to Borg if the package is out of date in the distribution.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
--- | --- | ---
Arch Linux | [community] | `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`
Mageia | cauldron | `urpmi borgbackup`
NetBSD | pkgsrc | `pkg_add py-borgbackup`
NixOS | .nix file | N/A
OpenBSD | OpenBSD ports | `pkg_add borgbackup`
OpenIndiana | OpenIndiana hipster repository | `pkg install borg`
openSUSE | openSUSE official repository | `zypper in borgbackup`
OS X | Brew cask | `brew cask install 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.

## Standalone Binary

Note

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

Borg binaries (generated with pyinstaller) are available on the releases page for the following platforms:

- Linux: glibc >= 2.13 (ok for most supported Linux releases). Older glibc releases are untested and may not work.
- Mac OS X: 10.10 (does not work with older OS X releases)
- FreeBSD: 10.2 (unknown whether it works for older releases)

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-linux64 /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 >= 3.4.0, plus development headers. Even though Python 3 is not the default Python version on most systems, it is usually available as an optional install.
- OpenSSL >= 1.0.0, plus development headers.
- libacl (which depends on libattr), both plus development headers.
- liblz4, plus development headers.
- some Python dependencies, pip will automatically install them for you
- optionally, the llfuse Python package is required if you wish to mount an archive as a FUSE filesystem. See setup.py about the version requirements.
- optionally libb2. If it is not found a bundled implementation is used instead.

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 python-virtualenv \
    libssl-dev openssl \
    libacl1-dev libacl1 \
    liblz4-dev liblz4-1 \
    build-essential
    sudo apt-get install libfuse-dev fuse pkg-config    # optional, for FUSE support

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 / Korora

Install the dependencies with development headers:

    sudo dnf install python3 python3-devel python3-pip python3-virtualenv
    sudo dnf install openssl-devel openssl
    sudo dnf install libacl-devel libacl
    sudo dnf install lz4-devel
    sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++
    sudo dnf install redhat-rpm-config                 # not needed in Korora
    sudo dnf install fuse-devel fuse pkgconfig         # optional, for FUSE support

#### 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 liblz4-devel openssl-devel \
    python3-Cython python3-Sphinx python3-msgpack-python \
    python3-pytest python3-setuptools python3-setuptools_scm \
    python3-sphinx_rtd_theme python3-llfuse gcc gcc-c++

#### Mac OS X

Assuming you have installed homebrew, the following steps will install all the dependencies:

    brew install python3 lz4 openssl
    brew install pkg-config                            # optional, for FUSE support
    pip3 install virtualenv

For FUSE support to mount the backup archives, you need at least version 3.0 of FUSE for OS X, which is available as a pre-release.

#### 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 openssl liblz4 fusefs-libs pkgconf
    pkg install -y git
    python3.4 -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 only been tested with Cygwin (x86-64) v2.5.2. Remote repositories are known broken, local repositories should work.

Use the Cygwin installer to install the dependencies:

    python3 python3-devel python3-setuptools
    binutils gcc-g++
    libopenssl openssl-devel
    liblz4_1 liblz4-devel
    git make openssh

You can then install `pip` and `virtualenv`:

    easy_install-3.4 pip
    pip install virtualenv

### Using pip

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

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

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

    pip install -U borgbackup  # or ... borgbackup[fuse]

### Using git

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

    virtualenv --python=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 -r requirements.d/fuse.txt  # optional, for FUSE support
    pip install -e .  # in-place editable mode

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

Note

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