Well if Deja Dup is Ubuntu's general / packaged backup solution and it can not backup system files, then Ubuntu is by default not able to to proper system backups, only user data backups. Which is a really big limitation.
I would strongly recommend to add the ability to backup vital system folders like /etc or /var (or those files in the user's home that are owned by root). Without, Ubuntu users are way behind other OS' capabilities in terms of system backups (of course one can solve this by a manually set up backup - but what's then the point in having a bundled backup solution?) As for security, you could make backing up root files an option, which requires an encryption password to be set. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to deja-dup in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1016012 Title: Backup (Déjà Dup) needs to run with root permissions in Precise Status in deja-dup package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Backup with Déjà Dup fails on numerous files due to r/w permissions for root only (600). It appears that starting with Precise (12.04) many systm files have changed permissions from earlier releases. Backup is no longer effective unless run with root permissions. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/deja-dup/+bug/1016012/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp

