Re: exclude list optional not working?

On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 10:06:07AM +0200, Paul Bijnens wrote:
> Jon LaBadie wrote:
> >
> >Paul,
> >I probably should look it up myself, but I'm feeling lazy.
> 
> Lazy, but you're correct!
> 
> >I thought that the various exclude features were generalized so that
> >amanda would make up its own exclude file from the various list and
> >appends.  In this way a dle could use a generic list from an exclude
> >file plus some other individual appends.
> 
> ... .  in amanda-2.4.5 sources,
> client-src/client-util.c, lines 276-277 do the test, and
> it only tests for ENOENT, not EPERM to suppress error msgs.
> And the exclude list file building is done as user amanda,
> without suid root at that time.
> 
> But even in that case, I believe this should flag an error,
> as implemented currently, otherwise the user would believe
> he created an exclude file, while amanda silently ignores
> it because she cannot read it.


Thanks for checking Paul,

I completely concur with your belief that the current behavior
is appropriate.

An optional exclude list file is fine.  But it is entirely
a different thing for file system permissions to prevent the
checking of the existance of the file.  Particularly so when
those permissions would also make an existing exclude list file
non-functional.

Seems to me the only thing that needs changing is the
amanda.conf man page.  Currently it says:

    ...  With exclude list, the string is a file name on the
    client containing GNU-tar exclude expressions.
    ...
    If optional is specified for exclude list, then amcheck will
    not complain if the file doesn't exist or is not readable.

As a suggested alternative this is a little verbose
but gets the message across I hope.

    ...  With exclude list, the string is a file name on the
    client containing GNU-tar exclude expressions.  The path
    to the specified exclude list file must be accessible to
    to the amanda user and the exclude list file, if present
    (see description of 'optional' below), must be readable
    by the amanda user.
    ...
    If optional is specified for exclude list, then amcheck will
    not complain if the file doesn't exist.  


BTW, is it just amcheck, or amdump as well,
that does or does not complain?

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
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