Files
scripts/vaultwarden-backup-helpers/vw-backup-check.timer
bdm dd26e7c751 Fix the vaultwarden backup failing silently for nine days
Every nightly run had been failing since 20 Sep, writing the reason only to
a log file nobody reads. The last backup on the share was from 19 Sep.

Root cause: a sudoers rule that names arguments matches only that exact
argument list. The rule allowed

    sudo /usr/bin/sqlite3 /var/.../db.sqlite3

but the script ran

    sudo sqlite3 /var/.../db.sqlite3 ".backup '/tmp/.../db'"

The second argument was not in the rule, so it did not match, sudo fell
through to the password-required bdm ALL=(ALL) ALL, and cron has no
terminal to prompt on. Reproduced with -n, so neither call could prompt:

    sudo -n sqlite3 <db>            # 1 arg, matches  -> exit 0
    sudo -n sqlite3 <db> "SELECT 1" # 2 args, no match -> password required

Two further problems were hidden behind that early exit:

The cleanup phase called sudo mount/umount/find inline, but sudoers only
whitelisted helper scripts that existed and were never invoked. The 60-day
retention was dead too. The old cleanup also could not distinguish "share
not mounted" from "nothing to delete": find matched nothing and the script
exited 0 reporting a healthy run.

The helpers that *were* whitelisted lived under /home/bdm and are owned by
bdm, so the grant was equivalent to unrestricted root.

Changes:

Move each privileged step into a root-owned helper in /usr/local/sbin,
deployed from the repo as source of truth. This avoids depending on fragile
argument globs and lets the rule constrain the one argument that varies.
vw-backup-db re-validates the destination path itself rather than trusting
the sudoers pattern.

Call the helpers from the script and drop the inline sudo. Verify the
snapshot with PRAGMA integrity_check before uploading, and abort rather
than shipping a copy that does not verify. Check smbclient's exit status
directly instead of piping into grep, which would have let SIGPIPE mask a
failed upload.

Add a systemd staleness watchdog so this cannot hide again. It mounts the
share read-only and separates STALE (nothing recent) from CANNOT VERIFY
(could not mount), which mean different things.

Also chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/bdm, which visudo was warning about.

Tested with a cold sudo cache, since timestamp_type=global means an
interactive sudo -v otherwise masks the failure. A real cron invocation
succeeded end to end: snapshot, integrity check, upload, and prune.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-09-28 11:11:42 -07:00

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437 B
SYSTEMD

[Unit]
Description=Daily vaultwarden backup staleness check
[Timer]
# Mid-morning, so it runs well after the 03:00 backup and would catch a
# missed or failed run from the previous night.
OnCalendar=*-*-* 10:30:00
# Catch up after the machine has been off, rather than silently skipping a day.
Persistent=true
# Spread the check a little so it is not always at the same instant.
RandomizedDelaySec=10m
[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target