Borgbackup setup on NixOs

Help
1

I am trying to backup my dropbox directory from my home directory to borgbase.com. I following this blog post: https://xeiaso.net/blog/borg-backup-2021-01-09 and I have looked at NixOS 24.05 manual | Nix & NixOS and https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/unstable/options.html#opt-services.borgbackup.jobs but I cannot seem to figure out the issue with why I am not the backup is not starting on borgbase. I have copied my root ssh public key to borgbase website too.

sudo ssh-keygen -N '' -t ed25519 -f /root/.ssh/id_ed25519_borgbase

This is a screenshot the nix code I have and the system status of the service created. I have also pasted the code below. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

image
image1738×909 162 KB 

{
  config,
  pkgs,
  agenix,
  ...
}: {
  # use agenix for passCommand
  age.identityPaths = [
    "/root/.ssh/id_ed25519_borgbase"
  ];
  age.secrets.borgbackup-xps17-nixos.file = ../../secrets/borgbackup-xps17-nixos.age;
  services.borgbackup.jobs = {
    dropbox_backup = {
      paths = ["/home/morp/Dropbox/"];
      exclude = ["'**/.cache'"];
      repo = "r0el6zc7@r0el6zc7.repo.borgbase.com:repo";
      encryption = {
        mode = "repokey-blake2";
        passCommand = "cat ${config.age.secrets.borgbackup-xps17-nixos.path}";
      };
      environment = {BORG_RSH = "ssh -i /root/.ssh/id_ed25519_borgbase ";};
      compression = "auto,zstd";
      startAt = "daily";
    };
  };
}
2

I can’t see anything obvious in your configuration.

Interesting is that if I use my borgbase connection I get response from SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_8.0 while when trying your one it is SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.4.

See telnet r0el6zc7.repo.borgbase.com 22 . They must be using some quite old servers somewhere which is quite worrying. For example NixOS 22.05 is using SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_9.1.

3

Ubuntu 18.04 is using OpenSSH 7.6 with some patches. So they must be running something older.

4 
telnet r0el6zc7.repo.borgbase.com 22

also reveals the borgbase server is runnning SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.4 as you pointed out. I am currently running the unstable version of nixos i.e. 23.05. Not sure how this affects the borgbase servers. Does the client and server have to be running the same versions of the openssh protocol?

5

No, server doesn’t need to run the same SSH version. But 7.4 is too old from security perspective and actually it might also be the problem to log in from new client version without some additional tweaks.

Try to run following command as root user:

ssh -v -i /root/.ssh/id_ed25519_borgbase r0el6zc7@r0el6zc7.repo.borgbase.com

to check if your SSH connection works. It should give you something like PTY allocation request failed on channel 0.

6

I received that error when I tried sshing into the borgbase server to update the ssh server.

7

Hey @jedimaster, did you ever figure this out? I’m in the exact same situation, but with a Hetzner StorageBox. (The OpenSSH version they provide is up to date, though.)

8

I’m also using borg with a Hetzner StorageBox and it works for me.

Did you set the port to 23? Like for example:

environment = {
    BORG_RSH = "ssh -p 23 -i [YOUR_SSH_KEY]";
}
1 Like
9

Hi,

yes, I did! Tried it both the way you’ve shown, as well as specifying the remote repo as ssh://uXXXXXX@uXXXXXX.your-storagebox.de:23/my/path, and also tried doing both. Same result.

10

Oh!! No!! It’s BORG_RSH, not BORG_SSH :person_facepalming:
Thank you!!

1 Like