borgbackup/docs/man/borg-compression.1

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.TH "borg-compression" "1" "2026-06-16" "" "borg backup tool"
.SH Name
borg-compression \- Details regarding compression
.SH DESCRIPTION
.sp
It is no problem to mix different compression methods in one repository,
deduplication is done on the source data chunks (not on the compressed
or encrypted data).
.sp
If some specific chunk was once compressed and stored into the repository, creating
another backup that also uses this chunk will not change the stored chunk.
So if you use different compression specs for the backups, whichever stores a
chunk first determines its compression. See also \fBborg recreate\fP\&.
.sp
Compression is lz4 by default. If you want something else, you have to specify what you want.
.sp
Valid compression specifiers are:
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.TP
.B none
Do not compress.
.TP
.B lz4
Use lz4 compression. Very high speed, very low compression. (default)
.TP
.B zstd[,L]
Use zstd (\(dqzstandard\(dq) compression, a modern wide\-range algorithm.
If you do not explicitly give the compression level L (ranging from 1
to 22), it will use level 3.
.TP
.B zlib[,L]
Use zlib (\(dqgz\(dq) compression. Medium speed, medium compression.
If you do not explicitly give the compression level L (ranging from 0
to 9), it will use level 6.
Giving level 0 (means \(dqno compression\(dq, but still has zlib protocol
overhead) is usually pointless, you better use \(dqnone\(dq compression.
.TP
.B lzma[,L]
Use lzma (\(dqxz\(dq) compression. Low speed, high compression.
If you do not explicitly give the compression level L (ranging from 0
to 9), it will use level 6.
Giving levels above 6 is pointless and counterproductive because it does
not compress better due to the buffer size used by borg \- but it wastes
lots of CPU cycles and RAM.
.TP
.B auto,C[,L]
Use a built\-in heuristic to decide per chunk whether to compress or not.
The heuristic tries with lz4 whether the data is compressible.
For incompressible data, it will not use compression (uses \(dqnone\(dq).
For compressible data, it uses the given C[,L] compression \- with C[,L]
being any valid compression specifier. This can be helpful for media files
which often cannot be compressed much more.
.TP
.B obfuscate,SPEC,C[,L]
Use compressed\-size obfuscation to make fingerprinting attacks based on
the observable stored chunk size more difficult. Note:
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.IP \(bu 2
You must combine this with encryption, or it won\(aqt make any sense.
.IP \(bu 2
Your repo size will be bigger, of course.
.IP \(bu 2
A chunk is limited by the constant \fBMAX_DATA_SIZE\fP (cur. ~20MiB).
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.sp
The SPEC value determines how the size obfuscation works:
.sp
\fIRelative random reciprocal size variation\fP (multiplicative)
.sp
Size will increase by a factor, relative to the compressed data size.
Smaller factors are used often, larger factors rarely.
.sp
Available factors:
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.EX
1:     0.01 ..        100
2:     0.1  ..      1,000
3:     1    ..     10,000
4:    10    ..    100,000
5:   100    ..  1,000,000
6: 1,000    .. 10,000,000
.EE
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.sp
Example probabilities for SPEC \fB1\fP:
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.EX
90   %  0.01 ..   0.1
 9   %  0.1  ..   1
 0.9 %  1    ..  10
 0.09% 10    .. 100
.EE
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\fIRandomly sized padding up to the given size\fP (additive)
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.EX
110: 1kiB (2 ^ (SPEC \- 100))
\&...
120: 1MiB
\&...
123: 8MiB (max.)
.EE
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\fIPadmé padding\fP (deterministic)
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.EX
250: pads to sums of powers of 2, max 12% overhead
.EE
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.sp
Uses the Padmé algorithm to deterministically pad the compressed size to a sum of
powers of 2, limiting overhead to 12%. See \%<https://\:lbarman\:.ch/\:blog/\:padme/> for details.
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Examples:
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.EX
borg create \-\-compression lz4 \-\-repo REPO ARCHIVE data
borg create \-\-compression zstd \-\-repo REPO ARCHIVE data
borg create \-\-compression zstd,10 \-\-repo REPO ARCHIVE data
borg create \-\-compression zlib \-\-repo REPO ARCHIVE data
borg create \-\-compression zlib,1 \-\-repo REPO ARCHIVE data
borg create \-\-compression auto,lzma,6 \-\-repo REPO ARCHIVE data
borg create \-\-compression auto,lzma ...
borg create \-\-compression obfuscate,110,none ...
borg create \-\-compression obfuscate,3,auto,zstd,10 ...
borg create \-\-compression obfuscate,2,zstd,6 ...
borg create \-\-compression obfuscate,250,zstd,3 ...
.EE
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.SH Author
The Borg Collective
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