Remote encrypted backup with duplicity

My father-in-law's hard drive died the other day and I was just able to recover the data using Knoppix and my iRiver. Since I recently discovered a superb program that lets me create encrypted backups on a remote server over ssh, I thought I'd spread the word. The program is called Duplicity and it is simplicity itself to use. Here is my remote backup script:

#!/bin/bash

# Copy this to /etc/cron.weekly and make it executable and owned by root

# Back up my most important stuff from the local machine to a remote
# server, encrypted with a passphrase

function run_duplicity
{
   echo Backing up '$1' ...
   PASSPHRASE=`cat /root/.blah/passphrase` duplicity $1 \
       scp://user@example.com//home/example/bkp$1
}

run_duplicity /var/lib/mysql/dbtobackup
run_duplicity /home/andy/Maildir

I have one "run_duplicity" line for each directory I want to back up securely. I have my passphrase in a file only reeadable by root in /root/.blah/passphrase, and you either have to type your ssh password each time you run the script, or you can set up a key to let you log in automatically using ssh-keygen.

Originally posted at 2007-05-02 05:55:42+00:00. Automatically generated from the original post : apologies for the errors introduced.