# backup and sst user for xtrabackup v2.3 and later

**URL:** <https://forums.percona.com/t/backup-and-sst-user-for-xtrabackup-v2-3-and-later/4834>\
**Category:** Percona XtraBackup\
**Created:** [April 11, 2016, 8:03am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/backup-and-sst-user-for-xtrabackup-v2-3-and-later/4834 "2016-04-11T08:03:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![zsoltkrenak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cab0a1/32.png) [@zsoltkrenak](https://forums.percona.com/u/zsoltkrenak)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2016, 8:03am UTC](https://forums.percona.com/t/backup-and-sst-user-for-xtrabackup-v2-3-and-later/4834/1 "2016-04-11T08:03:29Z")

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Hi All!

I would like to start using xtrabackup for Galera SST (instead of rsync) and for backup and I’m a little confused about documentation of using a backup and an SST user. For example I have a 3 node percona xtradb cluster and I can perfom a backup with this command which seems to be perfectly working:

xtrabackup --backup --datadir=/var/lib/mysql/ --target-dir=/backups/mysql/ --stream=tar \> /backups/mysql/`date +%Y-%m-%d`\_db\_backup.tar  
160411 15:24:16 version\_check Connecting to MySQL server with DSN ‘dbi:mysql:;mysql\_read\_default\_group=xtrabackup;port=3306;mysql\_socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock’ as ‘root’ (using password: YES).  
160411 15:24:16 version\_check Connected to MySQL server  
160411 15:24:16 version\_check Executing a version check against the server…  
160411 15:24:18 version\_check Done.  
160411 15:24:18 Connecting to MySQL server host: localhost, user: root, password: set, port: 3306, socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

I do not pass any auth info, but the output shows that xtrabackup connects to mysql as ‘root’. Is this correct? Evidently if this works perfectly this way, why do I need a backupuser with special privileges?

Thanks in advance!