Installing

Quick install

curl -fsSL https://vykar.borgbase.com/install.sh | sh

Or download the latest release for your platform from the releases page.

Docker

Available as ghcr.io/borgbase/vykar on GitHub Container Registry. An apprise variant (ghcr.io/borgbase/vykar:latest-apprise) is also available with the Apprise CLI pre-installed for hook notifications.

Config file

Create a vykar.yaml for Docker. Source paths must reference /data/... (the container mount point):

repositories:
  - url: s3://my-bucket/backups
    access_key_id: "..."
    secret_access_key: "..."

sources:
  - /data/documents
  - /data/photos

encryption:
  passphrase: "change-me"

retention:
  keep_daily: 7
  keep_weekly: 4

schedule:
  enabled: true
  every: "24h"
  on_startup: true

For a local repository backend, use /repo as the repo path and mount a host directory there.

Run as daemon

docker run -d \
  --name vykar-daemon \
  --hostname my-server \
  -v /path/to/vykar.yaml:/etc/vykar/config.yaml:ro \
  -v /home/user/documents:/data/documents:ro \
  -v /home/user/photos:/data/photos:ro \
  -v vykar-cache:/cache \
  ghcr.io/borgbase/vykar

Run ad-hoc commands

With a new container (uses the entrypoint, no need to repeat vykar):

docker run --rm \
  -v /path/to/vykar.yaml:/etc/vykar/config.yaml:ro \
  -v vykar-cache:/cache \
  ghcr.io/borgbase/vykar list

Or exec into a running daemon container:

docker exec vykar-daemon vykar list

Docker Compose

services:
  vykar:
    image: ghcr.io/borgbase/vykar:latest
    hostname: my-server
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - VYKAR_PASSPHRASE
      - TZ=UTC
    volumes:
      - ./vykar.yaml:/etc/vykar/config.yaml:ro
      - /home/user/documents:/data/documents:ro
      - vykar-cache:/cache
volumes:
  vykar-cache:

Reloading configuration

Send SIGHUP to the daemon container to reload the config file without restarting:

docker kill --signal=HUP vykar-daemon

With Docker Compose:

docker compose kill -s HUP vykar

The daemon logs whether the reload succeeded or was rejected (invalid config).

Triggering a backup

Send SIGUSR1 to trigger an immediate backup cycle without waiting for the next scheduled run:

docker kill --signal=USR1 vykar-daemon

With Docker Compose:

docker compose kill -s USR1 vykar

Notes

• Use -it with docker run for interactive commands to get progress bar output (e.g. docker run --rm -it ...)
• Set --hostname to a stable name — Docker assigns random hostnames that appear in snapshot metadata
• Mount source directories under /data/ and reference them as /data/... in the config
• For encryption, use VYKAR_PASSPHRASE env var or Docker secrets via passcommand: "cat /run/secrets/vykar_passphrase"
• Use a named volume for /cache to persist the snapshot cache across restarts
• The apprise variant (ghcr.io/borgbase/vykar:latest-apprise) includes the Apprise CLI for sending notifications to 100+ services from hooks. See Notifications with Apprise.
• The image includes curl, jq, and bash for use in hooks (e.g. monitoring webhooks, JSON payloads). For additional tools, extend the image: dockerfile FROM ghcr.io/borgbase/vykar RUN apk add --no-cache sqlite
• Available for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64

Ansible

An official Ansible role is available for automated deployment on Linux servers:

ansible-galaxy role install borgbase.vykar

The vykar_config variable accepts your vykar configuration directly as a YAML dict — since both Ansible and vykar use YAML, the config maps one-to-one:

- hosts: myserver
  roles:
    - role: vykar
      vars:
        vykar_config:
          repositories:
            - url: "/backup/repo"
          encryption:
            passphrase: "mysuperduperpassword"
          sources:
            - "/home"
            - "/etc"
          schedule:
            enabled: true
            every: "24h"

See the borgbase.vykar role for all available variables.

Pre-built binaries

Extract the archive and place the vykar binary somewhere on your PATH:

# Example for Linux/macOS
tar xzf vykar-*.tar.gz
sudo cp vykar /usr/local/bin/

For Windows CLI releases:

Expand-Archive vykar-*.zip -DestinationPath .
Move-Item .\vykar.exe "$env:USERPROFILE\\bin\\vykar.exe"

Add your chosen directory (for example, %USERPROFILE%\bin) to PATH if needed.

Build from source

Requires Rust 1.88 or later.

git clone https://github.com/borgbase/vykar.git
cd vykar
cargo build --release

The binary is at target/release/vykar. Copy it to a directory on your PATH:

cp target/release/vykar /usr/local/bin/

Verify installation

vykar --version

Next steps

• Initialize and Set Up a Repository