Mounting/Unmounting Network Shares Before or After Backup

Note: While most of the information in this article is valid regardless of which version of CloudBerry Backup is used, the most important part (the -preAction and -postAction options) are only available since Backup for Linux v 2.9

The case described in this article is:

There is a domain shared folder that serves as a file share
This shared folder is used for backup (whether as the source or the destination, does not matter)
The backup will be performed by CloudBerry Backup for Linux

Also, the commands syntax may differ for various Linux distributions and/or SMB configurations (in case it's a Linux-based NAS device). This article is based on Ubuntu 18 and a Windows 2012R2 domain network share.

So, let's start.

0. Change the backup plan ownership to the user who is allowed to mount network shares

sudo chown root:root /opt/local/CloudBerry\ Backup/etc/plans/*

Note: If you choose to use another user:group, make sure to set the same user:group in step 2

Note: For macOS it should be root:wheel instead - the same is correct for all usage of root:root

1. Create the file with the access credentials to the network share

echo "username=USERNAME" >  /path/to/credentials-file
echo "password=PASSWORD" >> /path/to/credentials-file
echo "domain=DOMAIN" >> /path/to/credentials-file

Note: No need to escape any special symbols in your password with the backslash

Note: The third line is not required for a workgroup shared folder or a Linux-based NAS device

2. Assign the desirable access permission to the credentials file

chown root:root /path/to/credentials-file
chmod 600 /path/to/credentials-file

3. Add the mount point to /etc/fstab

sudo echo "//SHARE-DOMAIN-NAME/SHARED-FOLDER-PATH /mnt/SHARE cifs credentials=/path/to/credentials-file,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlmssp 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

4. Create a script to mount the share

echo "#!/bin/bash" > /path/to/script-mount.sh
echo "mount /mnt/SHARE" >> /path/to/script-mount.sh
echo "exit 0" >> /path/to/script-mount.sh
chmod 711 /path/to/script-mount.sh

5. Create a script to unmount the share

echo "#!/bin/bash" > /path/to/script-umount.sh
echo "umount /mnt/SHARE" >> /path/to/script-umount.sh
echo "exit 0" >> /path/to/script-umount.sh
chmod 711 /path/to/script-umount.sh

6. Set the two scripts as the pre-backup action and the post-backup action

/opt/local/CloudBerry\ Backup/bin/cbb editBackupPlan -n "Backup plan name goes here" -preAction yes -preActionPath "/path/to/script-mount.sh" -postAction yes -postActionPath "/path/to/script-umount.sh -postActionRunAnyway yes"

This can be also done in the GUI or in the Web Interface, on the corresponding step of the backup plan wizard - the procedure is quite obvious so no additional description here.

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