Nils Breunese (Lemonbit) wrote: >>>>> The public key of the backuppc user needs to be in the >>>>> authorized_keys >>>>> file of the user account on the client. Also see >>>>> http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/ssh.html >>>> >>>> That is what I found to be the essential point in getting BackupPC >>>> working. >>>> Amazingly, it did not see to be stated clearly in any of the >>>> tutorials >>>> I looked at. >>> >>> Well, it's in the official docs and it's standard procedure for using >>> SSH with public key authentication. >> >> Where exactly do you think it says this in the official docs? > > At the link I mentioned above. > http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/ssh.html > says: > > "Key exchange > > To allow BackupPC to ssh to the client as root, you need to place > BackupPC's public key into root's authorized list on the client. (...)"
I've read the "Key exchange" section again, and I'm afraid I still don't think it is at all well explained. It's far too complicated, and recommends several steps which were completely unnecessary in my case, installing and running BackupPC under CentOS-5.2 , Maybe the setup is particularly simple on CentOS? >> In my view, BackupPC is an excellent program, >> with two large provisos: >> the documentation is very bad, > > I disagree completely. The docs on the site are excellent in my view. > Much better than for a lot of other open source tools I use. Do you > know about the BackupPC wiki? You can post clearer instructions there > if you have any. Or ask Craig to include specific changes. I came across dozens - probably hundreds - of simple problems encountered by people trying to setup BackupPC when I googled for "backuppc error 4 bytes". These stretch back over several years, and as far as I can see no attempt has been made to answer these queries with simply explained minimal replies. >> and the error messages (the 4 bytes nonsense) are even worse. > > That one might be hard to tackle at first, yes. If you or someone else > could contribute a patch that would make this better, by all means let > the list know. An error message should make some sense to the user. What information is "Unable to read 4 bytes" meant to convey? As far as I am concerned it might as well have said "Unable to read Sanscrit". Assuming the problem is that the server cannot access the client, might I suggest that "Server cannot access client" might convey a little more. Perhaps one might add, "Probably a problem in SSH setup". -- 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@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
