Remote Backup Path

This field in the Create Exam wizard is very important. It specifies the directory of the students machine to backup.

The default value is /home/user which points to the directory were all user related data is stored. In most cases the default setting will be sufficient.

Though, is it possible to change the value. If - for example - system log files need to be included in the backup (those are stored in /var/log), the default value /home/user will not be sufficient, since the users home directory does not contain var/log. Is this case Remote Backup Path should be set to /. Notice that, every single file on the system would then be backed up regularly. This results in very huge backups and a lot of network traffic, compared to the default path. Therefore only do this if you really need to.

It is also possible to restrict the path even further than /home/user. Let’s say, we only want to backup the files and directories on the Desktop. Remote Backup Path would then be set to /home/user/Desktop. Backups will be much smaller then, because a lot of files and directories in the users home directory would not be backed up anymore. But notice, if you do that, the Screenshots would not be backed up as well, because they are saved under /home/user/.Screenshots, which is not included in /home/user/Desktop. Also Libreoffice AutoRecovery information and backup copy would not be backed up (stored in /home/user/.config), therefore those options are absurd, when Remote Backup Path does not contain them.

Notice that the directory specified in Remote Backup Path must exist on the target system, else the backup process will fail.