Encrypted backup using Rsyc

**damo12** · February 4th, 2011

I support a small business which has an Ubuntu server running as a file server. The server is running Ubuntu 10.4.

There is one hard drive which is mounted as /media/hdd. Each night this is backed up to an external USB hard drive mounted as /media/backup. The backup is carried out using the command:

Code:

rsync -av /media/hdd/ /media/backup/

Is there a way to encrypt this back-up so that if the USB hard drive is plugged into another machine it cannot be read?

Thanks in advice for your help with what I'm sure is a stupid question.

**CharlesA** · February 4th, 2011

You'd have to use something like Truecrypt or LUKS to encrypt it. I'm not sure if you can mount an encrypted drive automatically tho.

**SeijiSensei** · February 5th, 2011

This looks like a good tutorial for Truecrypt on Ubuntu:
http://linuxandfriends.com/2010/02/0...-ubuntu-linux/

As Charles say, you'll have to enter a password when you mount the encrypted volume on the external drive. It sounds to me like you leave this connected all the time, so I don't see that as a problem. It will protect you against someone walking off with the external drive.

**damo12** · February 5th, 2011

Thanks for the advice, forgot to mention it's a headless server accessed through Putty and Webmin so the guide is out but it gives me a few pointers.

Thanks again.

**CharlesA** · February 5th, 2011

You can always forward X over SSH if you want to set it up via GUI.

**disabledaccount** · February 5th, 2011

eCryptFS: filesystem level, incremental backups, separate keys for files.
Disk-based encryption can be considered as "additional" security level, because it's relatively easy to gain access to data when "ecrypted" volume is mounted.