Remote backup of /root directory

Question

I'm setting up a server to do remote backups through SSH (pull). How can I copy the /root directory without logging in as root user?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 01 '11 at 13:26

Add your backup user to a completely new group created for this purpose, and make that group the group-owner of everything under /root

chgrp -R newgroup /root

or make a small script that tars up /root to STDOUT (say, /usr/local/bin/tar-up-root) and configure your sudoers to allow your backup user to run the script passwordless:

backupuser  ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/tar-up-root

and then

ssh backupuser@host-to-backup "/usr/local/bin/tar-up-root" > /var/tmp/remote-root-backup.tar

or run a script from cron, as root, on the host to be backed up, which tars up root to a file owned by the backup user and mode 600 (you don't want anyone else to be able to read this tarfile, or you've weakened security on /root), then have backupuser just scp this file off the host to be backed up.

Any of those any good?

Thanks for the advices, will probably use all of them for different problems :) — Markus Hedlund, Feb 01 '11 at 15:31

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 01 '11 at 12:14

0

Add your backup user to the wheel group, and it will have root privileges. Or add it to a less privileged group and give that group read access to the /root directory and all the files in it.

answered Feb 01 '11 at 12:14

Mike Scott

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Not to raise a stink, but what makes you think that wheel group membership automatically grants such powers? – MadHatter Feb 01 '11 at 12:19
There is no `wheel` group by default in Ubuntu – Markus Hedlund Feb 01 '11 at 13:03

Remote backup of /root directory

2 Answers2