Hi guys.

I need to do some backups, for now only /etc/. I was thinking about maybe to use samba to share it, so our app can backup the files/folder in this share. of course the share will be read only. is this a bad idea to share /etc?

what others folder should I back up?

thanks

what are you trying to accomplish? /etc really holds no vital information to DATA. it holds some system settings like your network settings and a few others, but nothing vital to a recovery.

why would you use samba to share /etc??? are you wanting to backup up files in /etc to a MS Windows computer? If that is the case create the share on the MS box and mount a cifs mount point. much simpler and more efficient. just use rsync to backup the data, but remember to look up in the man page for rsync howto tell rsync were to use for a /tmp as you will not be able to rsync directly to the cifs mount point in some cases. that all depends on the MS Windows box, but in 99.9% of the time you will have to tell rsync to use a local /tmp and not /path/to/foo/tmp during the transfer of files.

more importantly you should look to backing up DATA and any custom settings. your network settings, dhcp, dns, NFS shares via exports, etc... again really no need to backup the entire /etc directory.

actually there is not so much data to back up...

later I can exclude what I dont need..


the issue I just found with samba is:

I created /mnt/backup and the idea is to copy (with rsync or cp) directories like /home , etc /root...

then access the share from windows but I cant access "root" folder because it only has permissions for root 700...and if there is any other folder/file with this permissions, probably I wont be able to copy it..

yes that is correct. one option you have is making /mnt/backup set to 755 or other crazy lack of security permissions, then as you are running as root run the chmod -Rf 755 /mnt/backup after you complete the rsync of cp.

mount /mnt/backup
rsync -aviS
chmod -Rf 755 /mnt/backup

should do the trick.