How can I mount a borg repo so that non-root can read it?

[mariomadproductions]

I'd like to be able to read a borg mount as a non-root user. How can I do that?

[ThomasWaldmann]

You are aware that FUSE mounting does not require being root?

Running it as user is usually less problematic.

You can also check the allow_other mount option and user_allow_other fuse configuration option (see https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/mount.fuse3.8.html ).

[mariomadproductions]

Well I'm just using sudo, not logging in as root directly, and otherwise, I can't access the borg repo because of that folder's permissions. Is that not expected behaviour?

[ThomasWaldmann]

OK, if your repo is only accessible with root permissions then guess you have to try allow_other and user_allow_other, see my last post.

[mariomadproductions]

Thanks, just tried that, but something weird is happening - archive folders are empty and umount doesn't think anything is mounted? (Also: Not sure if I needed "ro" here - maybe its read only by default.)

$ sudo borg mount -o allow_other,ro [...]/borgrepo/ borgmnt/
Enter passphrase for key [...]/borgrepo:
$ ls borgmnt/
[...]
$ ls borgmnt/[archive]
$ stat borgmnt/[archive]
  File: borgmnt/[archive]
  Size: 0               Blocks: 0          IO Block: 512    directory
Device: 0,50    Inode: 23          Links: 1
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
[...]
$ borg umount borgmnt/
fusermount: entry for [...]borgmnt not found in /etc/mtab

[ThomasWaldmann]

Did you also update your fuse configuration with user_allow_other?

[mariomadproductions]

Seems like that isn't needed, and the issue is that the archives are checked are actually empty (according to borg list). Other ones worked. I do recall I had some trouble with the two that are empty. I'll have to backup the disk again to a new archive. Thanks for the help.