"Restore to" as normal user fails if HOME dir of backup user is not present

[mmrohloff]

I regularly do backups of my home folder with BIT. Now after quite a while I thought that it is time to do a fresh install of the system (now Ubuntu18.04 with BIT from the default repository V1.1.12). I have chosen a different user name than before. When I now try to restore a specific folder with the "restore to" option I get an empty message window and nothing happens. Then I started BIT from the terminal and there were error messages because of permission issues with the HOME folder. I simply created the HOME folder of the old user without creating the user and equipped it with the permissions of my present user. That way I can restore the data. It would be great to have that fixed.

[buhtz]

@There is a new forming maintaining team and we do review all issues. Is this problem still relevant for you, can you reproduce it with a newer or the latest release? Did you find a solution?

Tag: Feedback

[buhtz]

Dear @mmrohloff , do you have any updates about your issue? If you still use BIT can you reproduce the problem with the latest version 1.3.3?

[buhtz]

Seems not to be relevant for the opener anymore. But it is a use case we should investigate:

1. Backup $HOME of user One
2. Restore that snapshot as user Two (maybe on a different/clean/reinstalled) machine.

Keep the numeric userid's in mind.

[aryoda]

We should extend the "restore" dialog to choose between

• using the current user (and which group?) as owner of the restored files (instead of the backed-up owners in the snapshot)
• select a user and group as owner (required in case of BiT root IMHO)

[aryoda]

According to the (possibly outdated) FAQ missing users and groups should be worked-around during a restore:

it will store the current User -> UID and Group -> GID map so if the User/Group doesn't exist on the system during restore it will restore to the old UID/GID.