Areca Backup [LSARC/2008/681 Self Review]

[Darren J Moffat]

Mark A. Carlson wrote:
> Darren,
> 
> This case is to provide familiarity to Linux users coming to OpenSolaris
> and wanting to have the utilities here that they have in Linux. Once they
> are comfortable and discover some of the superior tools that OpenSolaris
> has that might be more appropriate, they will convert to those.

Or the will continue to use tools with weak crypto that doesn't actually 
backup their data and whey will have a bad experience of that tool on 
OpenSolaris and blame OpenSolaris not the tool.

> But if they need to learn all new tools when they first get here, they
> will not stay.
> 
> Darren J Moffat wrote:
>> Given the unsafe nature of the crypto in this project and the fact 
>> that it does not support ZFS ACLs or attributes I see no point in 
>> integrating this into OpenSolaris/Solaris. 
> See above.  It's not a competition for only the best tool to be chosen 
> for OpenSolaris, but more
> a matter of many tools, some good, some much better.
>>  It would in my opinion be more harmful to have it than not have it.  
>> It also provides a false sense of security due to the weak way that 
>> the passphrases are turned into encryption keys (ie there is no 
>> salting so no protection against brute force key attack).
>>
>> For personal backups it would be safer to use tar and if encryption is 
>> needed then the encrypt(1) and mac(1) commands can be used for to 
>> provide safer (than what this case provides) encrypted versions of the 
>> tar files using a documented and committed format.   Instead of this 
>> project maybe we should build a simple personal backup tool around the 
>> clis we already have in OpenSolaris.
>>   
> There are better tools, but that is not a reason to reject familiarity 
> cases,.

It is for me, this is *my* opinion and I don't think this case should be 
integrated for the reasons I've stated.

The project team wanting to integrate this case can work upstream to get 
the issues fixed.   The data loss because it can't backup ACLs, and 
other ZFS functionality I can not live with.  This won't reflect badly 
on this tool, in some peoples eyes it will reflect badly on ZFS or badly 
on the integration we have done with this tool into OpenSolaris.

If necessary I'll pull the derail lever and call for a vote, I'm happy 
to write the opinion text to formally state my opinion but I'd rather 
that the project team attempted to work with upstream developers to 
resolve the issues first.

These are security issues and security issues don't get to be brushed 
under the carpet for familiarity cases.

-- 
Darren J Moffat