Hi,

Alan McKay wrote on 2008-09-25 07:55:55 -0400 [Re: [BackupPC-users] possible to 
schedule unattended backups with backuppc?]:
> [...]
> That's one way.  There are several others.  If I'm not mistaken you
> only need the key exchange if you want encrypted backup transport.   I
> just use rsyncd because I don't care about encrypting the stream.   No
> key exchange required.

that is true, but the fact remains that if you want unattended remote backups,
you need a method that gets you unattended remote access to the data to be
backed up. There is simply no way around that.

It is not true, however, that the *web server* needs that access. The web
server just initiates a backup or restore operation, much the same way that
a web server initiates booking of a flight, for example. If you can hack a web
server, you may well be able to fly for free - depending on what other
security measures are in place. It is no different with BackupPC. If you don't
want web-based unattended restores, because that is too dangerous for your
situation, don't enable them. You might even be able to prevent web based
access to the backed up data while retaining web based control of the BackupPC
server by preventing the web server from accessing the pool - I haven't tried
that.

It's really simple. If you don't want something to be hacked, don't expose it
to the internet [or rather: potential "hackers"]. If you want (or need) the
luxury of accessing something from variable locations, bad guys may be able
to obtain the same access. If you do things wrong, bad guys can obtain more
access than you realize you ever had.

But all of that is only potentially relevant to the original question (and not
at all to BackupPC, if you ask me), because there *was no original question*
not sufficiently answered on http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/info.html (that's
the "Info" link on BackupPC's homepage - http://backuppc.sourceforge.net if
anyone was wondering). You can't read the documentation to someone on a mailing
list, because it's text based. The reading needs to be done by the person
wanting the information anyway, and it's more efficient for all involved if he
simply picks what he is interested in from the readily available documentation.
But you already said that, in more friendly, if less explicit words :).

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Holger

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net/

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