borg-repo-space(1)

💖 borg-repo-space — the manual page, bestie edition 💖

okay so you found borg-repo-space, which is a page from the borg backup tool (section 1 of the manual, iykyk). sit down, grab a strawberry, and let me tell you about the little command that saves you when your disk is being dramatic. 🍓

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✨ NAME ✨

borg-repo-space — it manages the reserved space in the repository. that's it, that's the whole job. 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

borg [common options] repo-space [options]

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so this command manages the reserved space in a repository.

here's the tea, and it's important tea: Borg literally cannot work in disk-full conditions. 😭 it can't lock a repository, which means it can't run prune, delete, or compact operations to free up disk space. it's giving "stuck in a parking lot with no exit." 💀

so, to avoid ever running into that dead-end situation, you can put some objects into a repository that just… take up disk space. like a little emergency stash. 🫶 then, if you do ever run into a disk-full situation, you can free that space, and after that Borg will be able to run normally, so you can free up even more disk space using borg prune / borg delete / borg compact. and after all that? do not forget to reserve space again, in case you run into that situation again later. bestie, it will happen again. reserve the space. 💅

Examples, because visuals help:

# Create a new repository:
$ borg repo-create ...
# Reserve approx. 1 GiB of space for emergencies:
$ borg repo-space --reserve 1G

# Check the amount of reserved space in the repository:
$ borg repo-space

# EMERGENCY! Free all reserved space to get things back to normal:
$ borg repo-space --free
$ borg prune ...
$ borg delete ...
$ borg compact -v  # only this actually frees space of deleted archives
$ borg repo-space --reserve 1G  # reserve space again for next time

🚨 reminder from your girl: it's borg compact -v that actually frees the space of the deleted archives. the rest is just vibes and bookkeeping.

one more thing: reserved space is always rounded up to full reservation blocks of 64 MiB. so it's chunky, not granular. no cap. 🌸

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

see borg-common(1) for the common options of Borg commands. those apply to everybody, they're the shared wardrobe. 👑

✨ options ✨

• --reserve SPACE — how much space you wanna reserve (e.g. 100M, 1G). Default: 0. 🎀
• --free — free all the reserved space. and then, bestie, do not forget to reserve space again later. do not leave the house without it. 🙈

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

• borg-common(1)

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✨ Author ✨

The Borg Collective 👑

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2026-10-07 — that's the date on this page, and this was borg-repo-space(1) out of the borg backup tool. now go reserve your space before something goes disk-full and ruins your whole day. mwah. 💖✨🦋