In this final video of the series, we take a hands-on look at the permissions that come with Backup and Migrate so that you’ll know which permissions can safely be granted to various administrative users of your site.

Backup and Migrate Permissions

Let's take a look at the permissions that come with Backup and Migrate.

To demonstrate the Backup and Migrate permissions, I'm going to create a new user and login as that user so that you can see the changes as they happen.

Now that that's done, I need to give them a few permissions so that they can access the administration areas. (I'm going to give all permissions to the "Authenticated User" role, just for simplicity. You should not give these permission to all authenticated users on a live site.

• Go to "People => Permissions" (admin/people/permissions)
• Check the following permissions
  • Access administration menu (you'll get a pop-up that asks if you'd ike to allow the authenticated user role to use the administration pages and help. Click "OK")
  • View the administration theme
  • (Save permissions)

Now when I refresh, the user has access to the administration menu, and can use the administration theme. Now, let's look at the Backup and Migrate Permissions

Access Backup and Migrate

This permission gives general access to the Backup and Migrate page (admin/config/system/backup_migrate), but without access to perform a backups, access backup files etc. there isn't anything on the page.

This permission is required in order for any of the rest to have any effect.

Perform a backup

Users with this permission can access the backup page and perform both basic and advanced backups. They can not create new Destinations or Profiles, or edit existing ones, but they can utilize all of them that are already configured.

Access backup files

This permission is only effective when used in conjunction with "Administer Backup and Migrate". If it is checked alone, there will be no noticeable difference in the user interface. They will be able to view backups by going directly to the list pages, but without a link to the pages, it's not likely they'll know where to go.

The following pages are examples of list pages:
"admin/config/system/backup_migrate/destination/list/files/scheduled"
"admin/config/system/backup_migrate/destination/list/files/manual"

For now, I'm going to disable this permission and I'll re-enable it when we get to "Administer Backup and Migrate".

Delete backup files

This permission is also limited in use without the "Administer Backup and Migrate permission. If the user has the "Access backup files" permission, they can still go to the pages above and then delete backups, but we'll keep this disabled until we get to "Administer Backup and Migrate".

Restore the site

This permission will add a "Restore" tab to the Backup and Migrate page. Users will be able to choose which database to restore to, and be given the ability to upload a backup file to restore from. (In order to have a backup file, they will likely either need to have the "Access backup files" permission, or access to the files on the FTP server, email account etc.)

If the user also has the "Access backup files" permission, they can go to one of the list pages, and will have the option to restore from one of the backups listed there.

For now, I'll uncheck this and move on to "Administer Backup and Migrate"

Administer Backup and Migrate

This permission adds the "Destinations", "Profiles" and "Schedules" tabs, and users with this permission will be able to create and edit all three options. This does not give access to the list pages, and users cannot download, delete or restore from backups.

Let's go ahead and enable the previous three permissions to see how everything works together.

Now, we have the "Restore" tab, we can view the lists of backups, we can download, restore and delete backups, and have permission to configure all aspects of Backup and Migrate.