IDrive Backups Permissions Question

Getting Help
1

Good Day,

I have been using linux (Debian, Ubuntu) for about a year now. I am admittedly a little green in many aspects so I appreciate you taking this slow for me.

I have an IDrive account that is backing up a directory located:
/mnt/sda/restic/resticRepoAlpha

This repository is set to be backed up to my IDrive account daily.

Definitions:

  • ‘IDrive Dashboard Autobackup’ → There’s a dashboard that runs in the background on the linux box. If it is invoked from the web it will start a backup job. ++it does not have Root privileges. (It cant read the restic repo)
  • ‘IDrive Backup Script’ → This is a shell script IDrive provides. If I run it as sudo, it can access and read 700 files.

IDrive’s Dashboard does not have root privileges when it is run automatically, or manually, from the web interface. And the Restic Repo has 700 privileges–and thus the IDrive automated dashboard task cannot backup the files.

The way I see it I have two choices:
(a) every day after the restic cronjob completes, chmod -R 744 the restic repo. (Because, assuredly, whichever chunks restic modifies or creates will have a 700 permission scheme.)
(b) stop using IDrive’s automated dashboard backup script. Run a script manually as sudo w/ a cronjob.

Q1: Is it possible to, from the start, have Restic’s repo not 700 privileges?
Q2: Is it safe to change privileges on the Restic repo? (Additive only of course, i.e. 744/755, from 700)

My goal is just to be able to backup the restic repo w/o root privileges. And to know whether or not editing the privileges in the restic repo is dangerous. If it is dangerous–then I will just use a sudo script and a cron scheduled task.

Let me know if I should clarify something. Thanks a bunch.

2

R̶e̶s̶o̶l̶v̶e̶d̶

Any other users using IDrive:
Simply sudo all your scripts. (Configuration & execution.) It will run as root and problems are eliminated.

3

That’s a terrible idea.

4

Cool–do you have something constructive to offer so that I might not dwell in ignorance? =-) (I should say that calling out the idea as terrible is appreciated. I want to be pointed in the right direction. So you’ve already done me a solid.)

5

It depends on your needs and requirements. You could create a group that the user that the script runs as and your own regular user are both part of, and set that group as the owner of the files, such that both of these users can access all the relevant files.

1 Like
6

That prevents me from haphazardly providing root access (and therefore full system access) to the IDrive processes.

Check–so the user that creates the repo has permissions to the repo. (Duh) I ran the repo creation as root, therefore only root had access.

My inexperience in Linux made me jump to some conclusions that now thinking about them seem silly.

I’ll give that a go. Thanks for your illumination.