BackTrack doesn't restore the correct file owner and group

Asked by Sacha Kozma

Hi everybody !

Here is the situation : I made a full backup of my ubuntu system (folder /, with BackInTime (version 1.0.34) with root privileges), and then I tried to restore it so I booted from a Ubuntu Live CD,formatted my partition, installed BackInTime (version 1.1.6), and used the fonction "Restore / to" to restore to my freshly formatted partition. Everything worked without any error, but when i boot in my ubuntu i couldn't login (boot loop, and so on). After some research I found that BackInTime didn't restore the files owner and group correctly : everything is owned by root:root.

So i checked in the file where BackInTime save the permissions and saw that it seems correct (for exemple here for the .Xauthority file, which need to be owned by the user) :

http://i.imgur.com/RozttzQl.png?1

But when I checked the restore logs, I found that BackInTime only used the chown command on the files owned by root, and not on the files owned by me (sacha), resulting in a situation where all the files are owned by root:root. For example for the same file (.xAuthority) :

http://i.imgur.com/VXCosg2l.png?1

We can see that the files that I should own is only "chomped", unlike the root file which are "chmoded" and "chowned"

Why is this situation happening ? I looked on different threads and forums but I can't find any solution.. In the changelog of BackInTime, a bug like mine has been fixed :
Fix bug: failed to restore file owner and group

But this was in the version 1.1.4, and I used the version 1.1.6 to restore the backup (but I used the version 1.0.34 to do the backup, maybe this is the problem but it seems strange..). Maybe because I restore with the root privileges ? But if I restore as a standard user I don't have enough privileges to restore all the files...

Thank you for your help !

Question information

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Solved
For:
Back In Time Edit question
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Solved by:
Sacha Kozma
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Revision history for this message
Germar (germar) said :
#1

Sounds like an other bug. I'll have a look into it tomorrow.

Revision history for this message
Sacha Kozma (sacha-kozma) said :
#2

Thank you very much for your fast answer !

Revision history for this message
Germar (germar) said :
#3

Okay, I tested this in a VM. If there is no matching user/group set up in the system (which is the case on LiveCDs) while restoring permissions, BIT will not restore user and group. That's definitely a bug. I'll move this into a bug-report. Please use that for further conversations.

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Germar (germar) said :
#4

Close this question

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Sacha Kozma (sacha-kozma) said :
#5

Aah I see.. Thank you very much for your help, it is very appreciated :)