On Tue, 2011-03-08 at 15:58 +0100, Cesar Kawar wrote:
> If you are going to make backups and the transfer method you choose is
>  ssh, you must know what ssh is and how it works, or you must grab some
>  books on ssh and learn their requirements, configuration, and what are
>  those magical things called public/private keys...

That's where BackupPC differs from nearly all other centralised backup
systems. They all have custom local agents (see bacula-fd for example)
whose configuration is covered by the backup software documentation.
BackupPC, by using other existing local agents, greatly simplifies
things and reduces security concerns. But it could very much do with
some good documentation or tighter integration with the client-side
agent methodologies.

What would that entail?

1. More informative error handling, such as the output SSH gives when it
fails.

2. Server setup wizards. Imagine you want to use SSH. In the web
interface, how about a GUI to create SSH keys for the backuppc user? How
about a "test SSH authentication" button?

3. Client setup wizards. Again, for SSH, you could browse the client's
page in BackupPC. If that client uses SSH, display a new tab: SSH. In
that tab, list a few steps to be pasted in the terminal on that client
which sets up root SSH (or sudo, whatever).

However, #3 leads to a lot of complexity, as BackupPC supports a lot of
authentication schemes, and even within rsync you have SSH as root, SSH
+sudo, etc.

Regards,
Tyler

-- 
"Scientific theories can be altered by publishing a paper with
reproducible results, and political principles can be changed every two
to four years with an election, but if you want to change religious
principles you usually have to wait for a whole generation of clergy
to die."
   -- Soren Ragsdale


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What You Don't Know About Data Connectivity CAN Hurt You
This paper provides an overview of data connectivity, details
its effect on application quality, and explores various alternative
solutions. http://p.sf.net/sfu/progress-d2d
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