How to Backup your Desktop using Pika Backup

Pika Backup is a GTK program designed to make simple backups based on borg. Frequent rumors that this software’s name is related to a monster with electrical abilities are unfounded.

Features

• Set up new backup repositories or uses existing ones
• Create backups locally and remote
• Save time and disk space because Pika Backup does not need to copy known data again
• Encrypt your backups
• List created archives and browse through their contents
• Recover files or folders via your file browser
• Supports automatic scheduled backups and clean up of old archives [version 0.4.0-beta-1 or newer]
• Source can be found here

Install

Pika Backup can be installed from;

• Flathub > $ flatpak install flathub org.gnome.World.PikaBackup
• On Arch though the AUR repo
• Built from Source using Gnome-Builder

Setup repository

• Create a SSH key - add it to your .ssh/config - see here for futher information
• Create a repository on borgbase
• Initialise

  $ borg init -e repokey-blake2 XXXXX@XXXXX.repo.borgbase.com:repo

• The URL in Pika is different to the borg command line & vorta - instead it will look as below. > ssh://XXXXX@XXXXX.repo.borgbase.com/./repo
• (Recommended) Add a password.
• Additional flags can be utilised via the advanced options box.
• Choose whick files & folder to backup & which to exclude.

Setup repository [0.4.0-beta-1 or newer]

• Create a SSH key - add it to your .ssh/config
• Create a repository on BorgBase
• Version 0.4.0 supports user@host:path syntax

Auto-Backups [requires 0.4.0-beta-1 or newer]

• Click scheduled backups
• Toggle ‘Regularly Create Backups’
• Choose a frequency (Daily, Weekly, Monthly etc)
• There is an option to ‘Regualrly Delete Old Archives’ which may be useful if you have storage constraints

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