Having this here sets a precedent for similar behaviour and operations on other operating systems which we don't want. This could turn into a messy collection of OS-specific ifs.

I think this is better suited to live within your own copy of backup.config as this is the location best suited for customer/site specific customisations; you might have the GNU utils at /usr/gnu/bin on your Solaris 11 system, but it doesn't mean everyone does (the various GNU pkg are optional IIRC).

How about adding a commented out PATH= entry and generic comment to the end of the backup.config-example instead?

I need to state that /usr/gnu/bin is where solaris installs gnu tools provided by Oracle. It is nothing optional about this path. I will investigate the backup.config-example.

I agree 100%. The point I was trying to make is you don't need to install any of the GNU pkgs to get a fully functional Solaris 11 system. If you so desire, you can install the GNU utils from source into /usr/local/bin or the old traditional location for third party software of /opt instead. In these cases /usr/gnu/bin wouldn't be a valid path.

... and it's because of ☝️ that I think it would be best to define the PATH specific to your system in the backup.config file.

I think it's best to make this as generic as possible without any references to specific operating systems. I know Solaris puts the GNU utils here (I used to work for Sun and then Oracle on Solaris 😄) but we shouldn't mention this in the configuration example as it's not generic.

How about modifying this to:

# The PATH for the backup utilities to use. The default PATH used is that of the 
# executing user which may not always be customizable or contain all the utilities
# required by the backup utilities.
#
# PATH=""

This leaves things very generic and open to customisation that best suites the operating system or environment.

So where should information for future users be placed so they don't have todo all investigation over again...

I worked for Sun+Oracle 10+ years.

As we document in the README.md, we rely on the comments in the configuration file to explain the purpose of each settings so I think this is a good place and generic enough for most sysadmins to find and understand, regardless of operating system. I think it's only a matter of getting the wording correct to keep things generic whilst at the same time conveying that this is what needs to be modified, regardless of OS, if commands are not in the path of the executing user.

I worked for Sun+Oracle 10+ years.

So did I. 👋 fellow Sun alumnus.

@janorn this change will break backup-utils on Linux hosts unfortunately, it's not equivalent:

rubiojr@enterprise2-dev5-cp1-prd:~/backup-utils$ ps -p 103090 -o comm=
bash
rubiojr@enterprise2-dev5-cp1-prd:~/backup-utils$ ps -p 103090 -o command=
bash ./bin/ghe-backup

What about ps -p 103090 -o args? according to https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E29030/ps-1.html, that may work on Solaris too?

@rubiojr seems to be the same on solaris. Never tested this on a running backup. args works on solaris.

ghebup@backup:~$ cat data/in-progress 
20170411T140748 7198
ghebup@backup:~$ ps -p 7198 -o comm
COMMAND
bash
ghebup@backup:~$ ps -p 7198 -o args
COMMAND
bash /home/ghebup/backup-utils/bin/ghe-backup -v

@janorn thanks. Feel free to update the branch so we can merge it.