Re: [BackupPC-users] Recommend add to manual

[Holger Parplies]

Hi,

Kenneth Porter wrote on 2017-05-14 18:37:53 -0700 [Re: [BackupPC-users] 
Recommend add to manual]:
> [...]
> What if you have TWO drives you want to mount to /var/lib/backuppc? With 
> BackupPC 4, it's not unreasonable to swap your backup media every week 
> to an offsite location.
> 
> Just create the skeleton directory structure in the external media and 
> run restorecon once it's mounted.
> 
> Another thing one can do is move /etc/BackupPC to the external media and 
> mount that directory over /etc/BackupPC so that your settings follow 
> your media.

I'm not sure I like the idea of mounting over parts of /etc, but that might
be a matter of taste. Why not symlink /etc/BackupPC to /var/lib/backuppc/etc
(or wherever your backup drive is mounted)? That way, a failing mount would
lead to an unresolvable symlink rather than an empty directory (or worse, a
directory containing something outdated, though, come to think of it, you
could populate /etc/BackupPC with something appropriate, assuming there *is*
anything appropriate in such a case; I suspect in the absense of your backup
drive you'd want BackupPC *not* to start).

All of that said, do you *really* want different configurations for your
different external media? Isn't the point to have an *identical* configuration
and swap around media in order to have an off-site copy?

> This makes it easier to do bare-metal restores.

Well, yes, but you can just as well rsync /etc/BackupPC to
/var/lib/backuppc/etc (or whatever) to keep an up-to-date copy on your
external media. For a bare-metal restore, you'll need to setup whatever
you need anyway, i.e. bind-mount /etc/BackupPC or create a symlink or
copy over the contents or whatever. You might have a script on your backup
media which does this for you. You might even have a working BackupPC
installation on your backup media. Your script could copy/symlink/bind-mount
that into your new system, supposing it can't be run directly from the
external disc. Just some ideas that spring to mind ...

> Just install 
> a minimal OS and BackupPC, then mount your backup drive and you've got 
> all your settings ready to do the restore.

Installing BackupPC from a distribution package is probably a better choice,
agreed, as you get dependency resolution (a web server, for instance). Call
me paranoid, but if I'd go to the trouble of keeping off-site backups, I'd
keep a self-contained BackupPC installation on my backup media. I can *still*
install BackupPC on the native OS and use that, but I'm less dependent on
external resources.

And, as I wrote, "mount your backup drive" is really at least two mounts,
which doesn't sound that much easier than one mount and one softlink. From
my experience, I'd say it's important to *document* what needs to be done,
and, personally, I'd document it in the form of a shell script containing
the needed commands.

Regards,
Holger

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Re: [BackupPC-users] Working on keeping this list on-topic

[Holger Parplies]

Robert Katz wrote on 2017-05-13 11:33:57 -0300 [[BackupPC-users] Working on 
install of backuppc in fedora 26]:
> running on Fedora 26 Congratulate me  :-)

I'll congratulate you as soon as you realize that this list is not meant for
*anything* concerning distribution packages, package management questions,
or linux questions. This is the *BackupPC* *upstream* users mailing list,
meant for questions relating to the BackupPC software as distributed by
git or tarball. Or at least it used to be. I'm at the point of unsubscribing
due to the large amount of noise here lately. This is not about mistakenly
asking one question here instead of at the appropriate place, it's about
repeatedly raising issues that are not even about BackupPC.

Whoever might be responsible, please kindly consider creating a backuppc-users
list at Fedora, Redhat or whereever, and announcing creation of the list here,
so whoever is interested can subscribe there, and we can point others toward
it when appropriate. Thank you.

Kind regards,
Holger

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Re: [BackupPC-users] Backing up Windows 7 Pro, not enough permissions

[Michael Stowe]

On 2017-05-15 05:20, Tapio Lehtonen wrote:
> Server is Debian 8.7, backuppc version 3.3.0-2+deb8u1
> 
> Backing up Linux computers works.
> 
> Have not been able to backup Windows 7 Professional. I have on windows
> local backuppc user, that user belongs to groups administrator and
> backup operator. The share C is shared to network and user backuppc
> has full rights.
> 
> Still the home directories of other users are empty. Only
> C/Users/backuppc has content.
> 
> So, Backuppc server can read files from the client, but not all files.
> Seems I can not figure any  more ways to give permissions to backuppc.
> 
> That Windows 7 is client in workgroup, the server is a Linux host
> running Samba 4.2.14. Maybe this is not relevant.

There are a few important things to understand here.  One is that not 
all transport mechanisms are created equal when backing up Windows 
systems.  From what you've said, I deduce that you're using samba to 
back up Windows 7, which is important, because it has permission and 
semantic implications.

First, permissions.  I note that Windows permissions can be complex and 
there's no inherent concept of a "root" account.  I note that shares 
permission and files permission are different things and must both be 
granted for samba to be able to read these files.  I note that Microsoft 
has recently added permissions that block smb/cifs from accessing 
certain system files or performing actions that might be considered 
"unsafe," which may be an issue, depending on what you're attempting to 
back up.

Second, is file semantics.  Windows isn't particularly good about noting 
what's wrong (and this also varies by transport) so that it's possible 
to get what looks like a permission error when what's actually happening 
is a semantic error.  Here I note that Windows can have files open 
exclusively (Outlook files and database files are common examples) which 
means that no other process, including backup processes, are allowed to 
read these files and are denied access.  Before leaving the semantic 
topic, I'll note that Windows also has the concepts of directory 
junctions and redirection; since that doesn't appear to be the case for 
something in your own directory.  But don't expect to be able to back up 
your own registry files directly through samba, either.

At any rate, these reasons are why I personally switched to a 
combination of rsync and vshadow (to handle open files) and put together 
a package to install the proper files on the client side.

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[Bob Katz]

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[BackupPC-users] Backing up Windows 7 Pro, not enough permissions

[Tapio Lehtonen]

Server is Debian 8.7, backuppc version 3.3.0-2+deb8u1

Backing up Linux computers works.

Have not been able to backup Windows 7 Professional. I have on windows 
local backuppc user, that user belongs to groups administrator and 
backup operator. The share C is shared to network and user backuppc has 
full rights.


Still the home directories of other users are empty. Only
C/Users/backuppc has content.

So, Backuppc server can read files from the client, but not all files. 
Seems I can not figure any  more ways to give permissions to backuppc.


That Windows 7 is client in workgroup, the server is a Linux host 
running Samba 4.2.14. Maybe this is not relevant.


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