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I have an ecryptfs "Private" folder in my home directory, and it is set up to automatically mount whenever I log in. I want to set up automatic backups to a network drive, but I don't want the contents of Private to be readable on the remote server. My understanding is that the Ubuntu "Backup" utility would run while I'm logged in, so it would see the folder contents without encryption. I'm backing up from a laptop, so it is essentially only on when I am logged in.

I know that the Private folder is essentially a mounted filesystem, so it seems like I should be able to backup the encrypted image rather than the cleartext contents.

What steps are needed to safely back it up, while maintaining the encryption? Note that I'm already familiar with the backup tools available, this question is about dealing with the ecryptfs folder safely.

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  • Wouldn't this be horribly inefficient? If you change anything in the encrypted folder, do you have to back it up in it's entirety each time? I am using @Uli's answer here to back up individual encrypted files with encfs, and it works very well. Maybe an adaptation of that answer would work best here? Aug 25, 2012 at 21:16
  • @TomBrossman no, it is pretty efficient. The files are individually encrypted.
    – nealmcb
    May 18, 2015 at 17:12

4 Answers 4

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As it turns out, the .Private filesystem is ecryptfs, which contains a separate encrypted file for each item.

My solution is to backup the contents of ~/.Private (even though it is mounted at the time). The backup process should handle any changes in that folder gracefully since they are individual files.

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+25
  • Logout from graphical desktop
  • switch to text mode using CTRL-ALT-F1
  • login as a different user with rights to access the encrypted files
  • copy contents of the encrypted file folder to your network drive. I would recommend writing a short shell script which copies the files using rsync
  • verify that you can mount and access the encrypted backup files

Reference: https://superuser.com/questions/227713/ecryptfs-how-to-mount-a-backup-of-an-encrypted-home-dir

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You can use duplicity

  • Securely gpg encrypted
  • Supports ssh, ftp, webdav, amazon s3
  • uses rsync (only changed files are sent in future backups)

Déjà Dup is a GUI frontend for duplicity. Make sure to check Encrypt backup files.

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You can use minio client aka mc

  • Supports amazon S3 & Google Cloud Storage
  • Written in Golang
  • Apache License v2.0

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