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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