Node: Backups of Secure Hosts, Next: Bug Reporting, Previous: Application Servers, Up: Top

## Backups of Secure Hosts

When you back up a secure host, you should exclude the host's keytab file from the backup. If someone obtained a copy of the keytab from a backup, that person could make any host masquerade as the host whose keytab was compromised. This could be particularly dangerous if the compromised keytab was from one of your KDCs. If the machine has a disk crash and the keytab file is lost, it is easy to generate another keytab file. (See Adding Principals to Keytabs.) If you are unable to exclude particular files from backups, you should ensure that the backups are kept as secure as the host's root password.