borg extract

borg [common options] extract [options] ARCHIVE [PATH...]
positional arguments
  ARCHIVE archive to extract
  PATH paths to extract; patterns are supported
optional arguments
  --list output verbose list of items (files, dirs, …)
  -n, --dry-run do not actually change any files
  --numeric-owner only obey numeric user and group identifiers
  --nobsdflags do not extract/set bsdflags (e.g. NODUMP, IMMUTABLE)
  --stdout write all extracted data to stdout
  --sparse create holes in output sparse file from all-zero chunks

Common options

Exclusion options
  -e PATTERN, --exclude PATTERN exclude paths matching PATTERN
  --exclude-from EXCLUDEFILE read exclude patterns from EXCLUDEFILE, one per line
  --pattern PATTERN experimental: include/exclude paths matching PATTERN
  --patterns-from PATTERNFILE experimental: read include/exclude patterns from PATTERNFILE, one per line
  --strip-components NUMBER Remove the specified number of leading path elements. Paths with fewer elements will be silently skipped.

Description

This command extracts the contents of an archive. By default the entire archive is extracted but a subset of files and directories can be selected by passing a list of PATHs as arguments. The file selection can further be restricted by using the --exclude option.

See the output of the “borg help patterns” command for more help on exclude patterns.

By using --dry-run, you can do all extraction steps except actually writing the output data: reading metadata and data chunks from the repo, checking the hash/hmac, decrypting, decompressing.

--progress can be slower than no progress display, since it makes one additional pass over the archive metadata.

Note

Currently, extract always writes into the current working directory (“.”), so make sure you cd to the right place before calling borg extract.

Examples

# Extract entire archive
$ borg extract /path/to/repo::my-files

# Extract entire archive and list files while processing
$ borg extract --list /path/to/repo::my-files

# Verify whether an archive could be successfully extracted, but do not write files to disk
$ borg extract --dry-run /path/to/repo::my-files

# Extract the "src" directory
$ borg extract /path/to/repo::my-files home/USERNAME/src

# Extract the "src" directory but exclude object files
$ borg extract /path/to/repo::my-files home/USERNAME/src --exclude '*.o'

# Restore a raw device (must not be active/in use/mounted at that time)
$ borg extract --stdout /path/to/repo::my-sdx | dd of=/dev/sdx bs=10M