Unmount server after backup

[Dahaniel]

I am doing backups to a samba share. When the backup starts the share gets mounted and appears in nautilus. When the backup is finished the share is still mounted, I think it should be unmounted after finishing the backup.

[Michael Luthardt (michalu)]

I don't see its importance as low. Imho it's a security risk.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

A security risk because someone might get access to your computer and thus gain access to the share?

[Michael Luthardt (michalu)]

Am Dienstag, den 17.05.2011, 15:20 +0000 schrieb Michael Terry:
> A security risk because someone might get access to your computer and
> thus gain access to the share?

OK, I'm a little bit paranoid if it boils down to personal use on a
single user PC only.

Kind regards,

Michael Luthardt

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

One concern I have is that it's impossible to tell whether the mount is in use by the time we're done with it. For example, if the user is browsing it in nautilus and we unmount, that's a jarring experience.

[typo (gnomeuser8)]

This unmount feature needs to be central controlled in the GNOME Virtual File System.

[Brendan_P (brendan-p)]

Same for SSH mounts and the like.

[barnaba (barnabaturek)]

+1.
I use external hard-drive only for backups. I plug it in only when Deja-Dup asks me to. It'd be nice if there were an option to unmount the disk when the backup is done.

I want to unmount and unplug my external hdd to keep it in a safe place. Now unmounting is the only thing, that I have do with my system to perform a backup. Ideally I'd just want:

1. Get notified by Deja-Dup, that the disk is needed for scheduled backup
2. plug in disk
3. Disk gets automatically mounted
4. Get notified by Deja-Dup that the backup is done
5. remove the disk.

It seems like it's not a big deal, but nobody likes doing backups. I think it'd be great, if we could streamline user's interactions with the system to the bare minimum.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't unmounting necessary to make sure that all data was actually writen to the medium (at least in case of some media)? The point can be made, that this change could increase the reliability of backups. Many less technical people unplug stuff without unmounting.

[vkapas (vkapas)]

Same when used Webdav.

[Brian D (cpmh1)]

One of the whole points of doing a backup on an external drive is so that things like "sudo rm -rf /" can't cause permanent catastrophic damage. Yes you shouldn't type that. No that doesn't mean it never happens. Add the security issues, and I would call this more than "low" importance. Plus it's just plain sloppy.

[Rob Frohne (frohro)]

I would like to put my plug in for this, because ransomeware is becoming common, and it will encrypt everything that is mounted. I should like deja dup to mount the drive when backup is scheduled and umount it after the backup is done.

[Sven Lohrmann (malnvenshorn-deactivatedaccount)]

After 6 years this feature is still missing. Please implement this. Keeping the backup space mounted, after backup/restore, is an unnecessary risk and increases the chance that ransomeware can encrypt your backups and make them useless.

[mlaverdiere (mlaverdiere)]

I agree that this bug should be fixed sooner than later, since it may be a security concern as others have pointed out.

In the meantime, here is my workaround: put this command in a user cron job to be executed each hour (or each day, whatever you want):

if ! pgrep "deja-dup" > /dev/null; then gio mount -u smb://username@yourserveraddress/path/to/deja-dup-folder; fi

Basically, what it will do is that if there is no deja-dup process running, it will unmont the SAMBA/CIFS share mounted by deja-dup

[mlaverdiere (mlaverdiere)]

Sorry, there was something missing in the command I put in the comment #12 (can't edit/correct it). Here is the correct command to be put as a cron job:

if ! pgrep -x "deja-dup" > /dev/null; then gio mount -u smb://username@yourserveraddress/path/to/deja-dup-folder; fi

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

I've added code that does this, if deja-dup was the one to mount the location. It doesn't really work with plugged-in drives yet, because nautilus is the one that mounts those.

But it works for remote locations, and is a base upon which we could eventually make drives work too.