why autobackup it is looking in all the folders in home dir ?

[rapi3]

Hi,
I just noticed I have a warning from autobackup on a new Linux test install, and I found that it is scanning all folders, not just the one MeshCentral is using. It fails if it doesn't have permission to access any of them (even if they're not used by MeshCentral).

backupconfig
DB Name: meshcentral
DB Type: NeDB
BackupPath: /home/xxx/meshcentral-backups
BackupFile: meshcentral-autobackup-2025-07-21-15-56.zip
Backup Interval (Hours): 24
Keep Last Backups (Days): 10
Backup IgnoreFilesGlob:
Backup SkipFoldersGlob:

autobackup
Creating a NON-ENCRYPTED ZIP
Starting auto-backup...
Zip error: EACCES: permission denied, scandir '/home/xxx/.config/htop'
Zipbackup failed (1), deleting incomplete backup: /home/xxx/meshcentral-backups/meshcentral-autobackup-2025-07-21-15-57.zip

versions
{
"node": "22.17.1",
"acorn": "8.14.1",
"ada": "2.9.2",
"amaro": "0.4.1",
"ares": "1.34.5",
"brotli": "1.1.0",
"cjs_module_lexer": "2.1.0",
"cldr": "47.0",
"icu": "77.1",
"llhttp": "9.3.0",
"modules": "127",
"napi": "10",
"nbytes": "0.1.1",
"ncrypto": "0.0.1",
"nghttp2": "1.64.0",
"openssl": "3.0.16",
"simdjson": "3.12.3",
"simdutf": "6.4.2",
"sqlite": "3.50.0",
"tz": "2025b",
"undici": "6.21.2",
"unicode": "16.0",
"uv": "1.51.0",
"uvwasi": "0.0.21",
"v8": "12.4.254.21-node.27",
"zlib": "1.3.0.1-motley-780819f",
"zstd": "1.5.7"
}

[si458]

you have a mis-config or setup of meshcentral
what does your config.json look like?
also whats the folder structure like for your meshcentral setup

[rapi3]

Hi,
node and npm if I remember it is installed for all server as root and MeshCentral is installed as user in a user home dir, nothing it is changed there as you can see the path it is /home/xxx/...

config it is ok

[si458]

ah right you have it installed in the home directory which is a bad idea (unless its a seperate user from ur main user)
if i also remember the backups go back a folder and backup the whole of its root folder
so really you should have it setup like this
/home/user/meshcentral/node_modules
/home/user/meshcentral/meshcentral-data
etc...
it would then backup everything inside of /home/user/meshcentral/
NOT /home/user/node_modules or /home/user/meshcentral-data

[rapi3]

The good thing it is not making backup of the full home folder only to: meshcentral-data folder ( but it fail to do backup if one parent folder it is not accessible )

[si458]

@PTR-inc might have some clue? any ideas?

[PTR-inc]

Just looked through the code. I think maybe it is the archiver glob function that does a cwd to the parentdir of the meshcentral-data folder that may be doing this, even though the meshcentral-data folder is the only folder to take into account. In my setup with meshcentral in a homedir this works just fine as long as the meshcentral service user has access to the homedir.

@rapi3 could you check the folder rights in the homedir root, including the hidden dirs?

[rapi3]

I just had a one folder in that /home/user location with different permission and home user / MC was unable to access it, once I removed archiver worked.

It look like archiver code need to stop looking outside meschcentral-data folder it need to back-up, or ignore the folder if can't access it and it is not meschcentral-data that need to be archived.

[si458]

The backup code will also backup other folders including meshcentral-web not just the meshcentral-data folder which is why it goes up 1 folder and backups everything up

An easy way to fix is below:

1. Stop meshcentral
2. node node_modules/meshcentral --uninstall <- this removes the meshcentral service/startup script
3. Create new folder called meshcentral in the home directory
4. Move all folders inside of meshcentral
5. cd into meshcentral
6. node node_modules/meshcentral --install <- this will install meshcentrals service/startup script and start meshcentral too

[PTR-inc]

This is the way 🖖🏼