BackupPC is a great backup program for an Ubuntu server. However, it doesn’t work “out of the box” due to Ubuntu’s lack of a root account. This is what I had to do to make it work.
Modify /etc/backuppc/config.pl
- Run “sudo vim /etc/backuppc/config.pl”
- Add sudo to the TAR Client and ClientRestore commands
- Change $Conf{TarClientCmd} to read
$Conf{TarClientCmd} = 'sudo $tarPath -c -v -f - -C $shareName'
. ' --totals';
- Change $Conf{TarClientRestoreCmd} to read
$Conf{TarClientRestoreCmd} = 'sudo $tarPath -x -p --numeric-owner --same-owner'
. ' -v -f - -C $shareName';
- Change $Conf{BackupFilesExclude} (for my config - these seem to all be temp files that you don’t really need to backup) to read
$Conf{BackupFilesExclude} = ['/proc', '/dev', '/tmp', '/mnt', '/media', '/sys', '/lost+found', '/usr/src', '/var/lib', '/var/tmp', '/var/cache', '/var/spool', '/var/run', '/var/lock', '/var/games', '/home/*/.Trash', '/home/*/.mozilla/*/*/Cache', '/home/*/.mozilla/*/*/Cache.Trash'];
- Change $Conf{XferMethod} to read
$Conf{XferMethod} = 'tar';
- Change $Conf{TarFullArgs} to read
$Conf{TarFullArgs} = '$fileList';
- Change $Conf{TarIncrArgs} to read
$Conf{TarIncrArgs}= '--newer=$incrDate $fileList';
Add backuppc to the sudoers list
- Run “sudo visudo”
- At the bottom of the file add
# Allow backuppc to run tar without a password
backuppc ALL=NOPASSWD: /bin/tar
Delete all of the text from /etc/backuppc/localhost.pl. This will prevent the “per-PC” defaults from overriding the changes above.
By adding sudo to the TAR commands in /etc/backuppc/config.pl and adding backuppc to the sudoers list, you’re able to perform both backups and restores directly from the web-based interface.
