[GTALUG] Man deletes his entire company

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 05:12:40PM -0400, Alvin Starr wrote:
> For things like system backups you tend to have to run as root.

Often for some parts.

> Your backup device often has to be connected to the server. I have yet to
> see a backup media the magicaly gets data written to it while on the shelf.
> So once you have plugged in your back up media to backup and  your backup
> program runs wild ... your kind of screwed.

That's why you have a rotation of backup devices.  That way you still
have a backup while creating a new one.  If your only backup is connected
to your system, then you have no backups at all.

> I kind of think it would be possible to use selinux to insure things like
> backups or system files cannot be deleted by accident.
> 
> That would take some work to get right and I believe most systems run with
> selinux disabled.
> I know there are more than a few packages that I administer where they
> outright say the selinux must be disabled.
> 
> Screwing up backup software is all too easy.
> I once worked for a computer company the sold systems to banks and for about
> a 3 month period a bug in the tape driver software was writing blank tapes.
> It was not discovered till a customer tried to restore something simple.
> Fortunately nobody needed to do a real restore of important data.

Well it isn't really a backup until it is verified either.  Many people
skip that step.  I certainly have at home in many cases.

> This company had a number of VERY smart people doing the coding but still
> silly errors crept through.

-- 
Len Sorensen