Areca Backup [LSARC/2008/681 Self Review]

[Darren J Moffat]

Grant Zhang wrote:
> I agree with Mark. The point of porting many FOSS packages into Open 
> Solaris is to make people comfortable enough in using the very same 
> tools in Open Solaris.
> 
> Back to this case, Areca is a backup utility, not a crypto utility. 
> Encryption is just one feature provided by Areca, although as you 
> observed, not very strong encryption. It is possible to use Areca to 
> back up the files totally unencrypted, which is not uncommon in personal 
> backup space. For folks with strong security needs, encrypt(1) or mac(1) 
> can still be used on the backups.

Backup utilities need to backup *ALL* the data and *ALL* the 
permissions.  If extended attribtues are not able to be included then 
that is not *ALL* the data, if ACLs are not included then that is not 
*ALL* the permissions.

> Areca is an active project and a lot of people are using it on Windows 
> and Linux. Please don't reject it so we have one less choice on 
> OpenSolaris.

Maybe on Windows and Linux it is sufficient but on OpenSolaris there 
*WILL* be data loss and possibly security issues on restore due to a 
lack of ACLs.

There are still unanswered technical questions on the password/key 
management as well.

I am very close to derailing this case and voting deny so that an 
opinion can be written however that is just my vote and the case could 
still get approved if that happens.

-- 
Darren J Moffat