Include all relevant user-created and user-customizable dom0 files in backups

[rootkovska]

Examples:

• net topology
• qrexec policies
• guid.conf (no longer user-customizable)
• Possibly /etc/qubes or other files inside of it (which includes the aforementioned qrexec policies) (Meaningfully backup dom0 with Qubes Backup #5608)
• Salt states (No easy way to back up Salt states in dom0 #7679)

[marmarek]

Net topology is already included (if not, please give concrete example). Others - yes, should be.

[andrewdavidwong]

Might be nice also to include:

• /etc/default/grub
• /etc/crontab
• /etc/crypttab
• /etc/fstab

[marmarek]

@axon-qubes I'm not sure about those files - those are highly specific to particular installation, if you restore the backup on fresh installation, replacing those files most likely will break the system (at least because of different UUIDs)
Maybe /etc/crontab worth including.

[andrewdavidwong]

Right, I was mainly thinking to include them in the backup but not automatically restore. But you make a good point. Perhaps it's better to leave it up to users to cp them to dom0's home before backing up.

[andrewdavidwong]

Maybe /etc/crontab worth including.

Actually, I just checked, and my /etc/crontab has no entries, even though I have entries which show up when I do crontab -l (and they are working). So, backing up /etc/crontab would not be very useful (at least in my case).

[marmot1791]

Since this is marked as a duplicate of the feature request I raised, I'd like to propose that backup of dom0 should include:

• /etc/qubes
• /etc/qubes-rpc

and that these files should be restored to ~/restore/etc/qubes and ~/restore/etc/qubes-rpc respectively. Later maybe other files from dom0 could be included by default or a preference setting to do so could be implemented.

I would also appreciate others' input as to what documentation should accompany this. In particular, do we expect that a user can copy ~/restore/etc/qubes and ~/restore/etc/qubes-rpc into a new install's /etc/qubes and /etc/qubes-rpc without issues? Is that true only for the same release or also across point releases (e.g. R4.0 -> R4.1).

I would like to implement this and provide some pull requests, and it seems like consensus on the solution will make them more likely to be accepted.

[andrewdavidwong]

Generalizing this issue to reflect developments in Qubes OS since it was first opened.