Snap: moraine — OpenID transaction in progress
Upstream: GitHub - TheJonaz/moraine-backup: Snapshot-based backup over SSH/rsync and rclone — CLI + iced desktop client · GitHub · MIT
moraine is a CLI backup tool: it takes hard-linked snapshots of user-selected
paths to a NAS/server over SSH (rsync) or to cloud storage via rclone. In that
earlier thread I asked for classic confinement; that was declined, and
@ogra recommended system-backup plus personal-files instead. I reworked the
snap to strict on that advice. Revision 2 was then rejected because
personal-files needs its own request, so I published without it — the snap has
been live in stable since, currently revision 4 (0.3.1), strict, with
home, removable-media, network and ssh-keys. This post is the missing
request.
What I’m asking for: permission to use personal-files (read-only).
I am not requesting auto-connection — users would run
snap connect moraine:dot-files themselves.
Plug requested
plugs:
dot-files:
interface: personal-files
read:
- $HOME/.ssh
- $HOME/.gnupg
- $HOME/.config
- $HOME/.gitconfig
- $HOME/.mozilla
- $HOME/.thunderbird
Why these paths
The home interface excludes every top-level dotfile (owner @{HOME}/[^s.]**),
and those dotfiles are precisely what a backup tool exists to preserve. moraine recommend proposes exactly
eleven source locations by default on Linux, and the six above are precisely the
ones home cannot reach: the other five (~/Documents, ~/Desktop,
~/Pictures, ~/Music, ~/Videos) are re-downloadable media, while these six
are configuration, keys and mail profiles. A backup snap that silently skips a user’s
~/.ssh, ~/.gnupg and ~/.config is worse than no backup, because the gap is
invisible until a restore.
The list is not an open-ended grab: it is exactly the dotfile half of the tool’s own default source set (src/recommend.rs), fixed, enumerable and shipped in the recipe. Nothing was added to it for this request.
Why read-only
moraine never writes to a source — it only reads sources and writes to the
destination (a remote host over SSH/rclone, or removable media). So every path
is declared under read:, not write:.
Alternatives considered
homealone — excludes all of the above, i.e. the actual problem.- classic confinement — declined in thread 52730; strict + interfaces is the route I was pointed to, and I agree it is the better one.
system-backup— I plan to use it later for whole-system/arbitrary paths, but it exposes the host read-only under/var/lib/snapd/hostfs, which needs app-side path handling first, and it is a heavier permission than reading a fixed list of the user’s own dotfiles.
Happy to trim the list or answer any questions. Thanks for reviewing!
