How to Run Backups on Locally-Mounted Remote Filesystems

Last modified: July 30, 2019

Overview

This document describes how to run backups on locally-mounted remote filesystems.

To mount or unmount a partition, you must place the partition in the /etc/fstab file. This file contains a list of mountable file systems and their configuration options. The backup utility only mounts or unmounts partitions that appear in the /etc/fstab file.

Warning:

We strongly recommend that you do not perform backups to remote filesystems (for example, NFS, CIFS, smbfs, or other types of network drive systems). While you can store a backup directly to a remote filesystem, cPanel & WHM does not support this configuration.
We strongly recommend that you work with a qualified system administrator to manage this custom backup path to avoid potential risks.
We are not responsible for any data loss that an attempt to perform the steps in this document causes.

Configure the filesystem

If you use a mounted filesystem to store backups, we strongly recommend that you mount the system with the noexec option. To do this, open the /etc/fstab file with a text editor and edit its entry to resemble the following example:

/dev/sda5 /backup ext3 defaults,noexec 0 0

The example above describes the following configuration options:

/dev/sda5 — The device.
/backup — The default mount point.
ext3 — The file system type.
defaults,noexec — The mount options.
0 — The dump options.
0 — The fsck order.

Remount a backup disk

To remount a backup disk while the system reboots, run the following command:

mount -o remount,noexec /backup