Holger Parplies wrote:

>> > Is it not possible that running "ssh -l root <client>" on the server
>> > actually sets up the connection appropriately for BackupPC?
>> 
>> No, it should ask for a password if it doesn't find matching keys.
> 
> or, more clearly, no, it is completely impossible. It's *exactly* the same
> as asking "isn't it possible that if I try to login as the backuppc user,
> the computer will print out the password I need to complete the
> procedure?".

Note that I didn't say I wasn't asked for a password
when giving the above command - I don't remember.
What I said was that _after_ giving the command,
and thereby logging in as root on the client (and then exiting)
I was able to run BackupPC (through the web interface)
and backup a specified directory on the client machine.

As it happens, I have a laptop I just installed Fedora-10 on,
so it has a clean / .
I shall try what I did again
(even though I am reasonably well persuaded it is not the right thing to do)
and see if it works as I said it did.

Actually, I have to catch a plane in 3 hours, 
and I see I have to "yum update" the laptop with F10 newly installed,
so may not have time for this experiment.

OK, I did the experiment
and I confess that BackupPC did not work
until I added the server's backuppc id_rsa.pub
to root's authorized_keys .

However, I've checked the 4 computers I have backed up successfully,
and one of them does not have backuppc's id_rsa.pub
in its root's authorized_keys .
I'm not sure if running all the operations on the same client
(ssh-ing into the server) could have confused things at one point?
Possibly it confused me ...

In any case, I admit the error of my ways.
I have even removed the authorized_keys on the server's backuppc
and this does not affect BackupPC's usage.

I was right about Berlusconi, though.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
BackupPC-users mailing list
BackupPC-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
List:    https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
Wiki:    http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net
Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/