What's the best practice for backing up encrypted Ubuntu home dir?
After installing Ubuntu 12.04 and electing to encrypt my entire home directory, I am now wondering what the best way would be to back up the data here.
I backed up the rest of my file system with the command
tar -cvpjf sysbackup.tar.bz2 --exclude=/sysbackup.tar.bz2
--exclude=/sysbackup.log --exclude=/home --one-file-system / 1> sysbackup.log
(and the boot/efi
partition in a similar way), but I am unsure what do about the /home/user
directory.
Option 1) Backup the encrypted /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.Private
and /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.encryptfs
dirs. Then in the future, in case of disaster, recover it to access files with sudo ecryptfs-recover-private
, as detailed here, from a live-CD. With the rest of my system backup, I could format and partition as before with gParted, then restore /
, /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.Private
and /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.encryptfs
. Downside: possibly no tar compression, and probably no way to exclude subdirs.
Option 2) When I log in, the home dir is mounted with all files unencrypted automatically, so presumably I could simply make a tar
of everything here (the .encryptfs
and .Private
in /home/$USER
are just symlinks to the real encrypted data at /home/.encryptfs/$USER/
...I think they may have something to with launching the auto-mount on login? So I won't include these in backup)
The problem I see with Option 2) in the event of system failure, it might not be possible just to format and partition the disk from the live-CD, restore /
and then simply restore /home/$USER
because now /home/.encryptfs
would be missing, so this might lead to issues, with Ubuntu expecting encrypted home and trying to unexcrypt and mount the private directories normally in /home/.encryptfs
but not finding these..
(A secondary downside would be the tar is not stored in encrypted form, although gpg or deja dup could solve that concern anyway).
What I'm really asking is: if the system died, and I had to boot up via a live CD, format my linux partition and get out my backup, let's say it's on a USB stick, would I be able to simply mount the partion to /media/whatever
extract everything excluding home from the backup of /
( via sudo tar -xvpzf /media/USB/path/to/backup.tar.gz -C /media/whatever --numeric-owner
), then create a /media/whatever/home/$USER
and simply copy all my plain-text home dir there...and then reboot and get a system as it always was, or would the fact that I previously had an encrypted home dir cause some issue upon reboot? would something in the way encryptfs
start to complain (and maybe not load my home dir properly), or would things be totally fine?
I suppose this is equivalent to if right now I just deleted my encrypted /home/$USER
and /home/.encryptfs
dirs (after unmounting on another user acc etc etc) then recreated my /home/$USER
contents with the plain text files..I tried this experiment on a virtual machine and everything seemed to go through just fine, so I think encryptfs would not mess things up...(perhaps so long as the symlinks in the home dir are gone?)
backup encryption home-directory ecryptfs
bumped to the homepage by Community♦ 8 hours ago
This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed.
add a comment |
After installing Ubuntu 12.04 and electing to encrypt my entire home directory, I am now wondering what the best way would be to back up the data here.
I backed up the rest of my file system with the command
tar -cvpjf sysbackup.tar.bz2 --exclude=/sysbackup.tar.bz2
--exclude=/sysbackup.log --exclude=/home --one-file-system / 1> sysbackup.log
(and the boot/efi
partition in a similar way), but I am unsure what do about the /home/user
directory.
Option 1) Backup the encrypted /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.Private
and /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.encryptfs
dirs. Then in the future, in case of disaster, recover it to access files with sudo ecryptfs-recover-private
, as detailed here, from a live-CD. With the rest of my system backup, I could format and partition as before with gParted, then restore /
, /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.Private
and /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.encryptfs
. Downside: possibly no tar compression, and probably no way to exclude subdirs.
Option 2) When I log in, the home dir is mounted with all files unencrypted automatically, so presumably I could simply make a tar
of everything here (the .encryptfs
and .Private
in /home/$USER
are just symlinks to the real encrypted data at /home/.encryptfs/$USER/
...I think they may have something to with launching the auto-mount on login? So I won't include these in backup)
The problem I see with Option 2) in the event of system failure, it might not be possible just to format and partition the disk from the live-CD, restore /
and then simply restore /home/$USER
because now /home/.encryptfs
would be missing, so this might lead to issues, with Ubuntu expecting encrypted home and trying to unexcrypt and mount the private directories normally in /home/.encryptfs
but not finding these..
(A secondary downside would be the tar is not stored in encrypted form, although gpg or deja dup could solve that concern anyway).
What I'm really asking is: if the system died, and I had to boot up via a live CD, format my linux partition and get out my backup, let's say it's on a USB stick, would I be able to simply mount the partion to /media/whatever
extract everything excluding home from the backup of /
( via sudo tar -xvpzf /media/USB/path/to/backup.tar.gz -C /media/whatever --numeric-owner
), then create a /media/whatever/home/$USER
and simply copy all my plain-text home dir there...and then reboot and get a system as it always was, or would the fact that I previously had an encrypted home dir cause some issue upon reboot? would something in the way encryptfs
start to complain (and maybe not load my home dir properly), or would things be totally fine?
I suppose this is equivalent to if right now I just deleted my encrypted /home/$USER
and /home/.encryptfs
dirs (after unmounting on another user acc etc etc) then recreated my /home/$USER
contents with the plain text files..I tried this experiment on a virtual machine and everything seemed to go through just fine, so I think encryptfs would not mess things up...(perhaps so long as the symlinks in the home dir are gone?)
backup encryption home-directory ecryptfs
bumped to the homepage by Community♦ 8 hours ago
This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed.
2
I asked a similar but not identical question here: askubuntu.com/questions/176268/…
– ImaginaryRobots
Dec 24 '13 at 21:27
add a comment |
After installing Ubuntu 12.04 and electing to encrypt my entire home directory, I am now wondering what the best way would be to back up the data here.
I backed up the rest of my file system with the command
tar -cvpjf sysbackup.tar.bz2 --exclude=/sysbackup.tar.bz2
--exclude=/sysbackup.log --exclude=/home --one-file-system / 1> sysbackup.log
(and the boot/efi
partition in a similar way), but I am unsure what do about the /home/user
directory.
Option 1) Backup the encrypted /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.Private
and /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.encryptfs
dirs. Then in the future, in case of disaster, recover it to access files with sudo ecryptfs-recover-private
, as detailed here, from a live-CD. With the rest of my system backup, I could format and partition as before with gParted, then restore /
, /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.Private
and /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.encryptfs
. Downside: possibly no tar compression, and probably no way to exclude subdirs.
Option 2) When I log in, the home dir is mounted with all files unencrypted automatically, so presumably I could simply make a tar
of everything here (the .encryptfs
and .Private
in /home/$USER
are just symlinks to the real encrypted data at /home/.encryptfs/$USER/
...I think they may have something to with launching the auto-mount on login? So I won't include these in backup)
The problem I see with Option 2) in the event of system failure, it might not be possible just to format and partition the disk from the live-CD, restore /
and then simply restore /home/$USER
because now /home/.encryptfs
would be missing, so this might lead to issues, with Ubuntu expecting encrypted home and trying to unexcrypt and mount the private directories normally in /home/.encryptfs
but not finding these..
(A secondary downside would be the tar is not stored in encrypted form, although gpg or deja dup could solve that concern anyway).
What I'm really asking is: if the system died, and I had to boot up via a live CD, format my linux partition and get out my backup, let's say it's on a USB stick, would I be able to simply mount the partion to /media/whatever
extract everything excluding home from the backup of /
( via sudo tar -xvpzf /media/USB/path/to/backup.tar.gz -C /media/whatever --numeric-owner
), then create a /media/whatever/home/$USER
and simply copy all my plain-text home dir there...and then reboot and get a system as it always was, or would the fact that I previously had an encrypted home dir cause some issue upon reboot? would something in the way encryptfs
start to complain (and maybe not load my home dir properly), or would things be totally fine?
I suppose this is equivalent to if right now I just deleted my encrypted /home/$USER
and /home/.encryptfs
dirs (after unmounting on another user acc etc etc) then recreated my /home/$USER
contents with the plain text files..I tried this experiment on a virtual machine and everything seemed to go through just fine, so I think encryptfs would not mess things up...(perhaps so long as the symlinks in the home dir are gone?)
backup encryption home-directory ecryptfs
After installing Ubuntu 12.04 and electing to encrypt my entire home directory, I am now wondering what the best way would be to back up the data here.
I backed up the rest of my file system with the command
tar -cvpjf sysbackup.tar.bz2 --exclude=/sysbackup.tar.bz2
--exclude=/sysbackup.log --exclude=/home --one-file-system / 1> sysbackup.log
(and the boot/efi
partition in a similar way), but I am unsure what do about the /home/user
directory.
Option 1) Backup the encrypted /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.Private
and /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.encryptfs
dirs. Then in the future, in case of disaster, recover it to access files with sudo ecryptfs-recover-private
, as detailed here, from a live-CD. With the rest of my system backup, I could format and partition as before with gParted, then restore /
, /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.Private
and /home/.encryptfs/$USER/.encryptfs
. Downside: possibly no tar compression, and probably no way to exclude subdirs.
Option 2) When I log in, the home dir is mounted with all files unencrypted automatically, so presumably I could simply make a tar
of everything here (the .encryptfs
and .Private
in /home/$USER
are just symlinks to the real encrypted data at /home/.encryptfs/$USER/
...I think they may have something to with launching the auto-mount on login? So I won't include these in backup)
The problem I see with Option 2) in the event of system failure, it might not be possible just to format and partition the disk from the live-CD, restore /
and then simply restore /home/$USER
because now /home/.encryptfs
would be missing, so this might lead to issues, with Ubuntu expecting encrypted home and trying to unexcrypt and mount the private directories normally in /home/.encryptfs
but not finding these..
(A secondary downside would be the tar is not stored in encrypted form, although gpg or deja dup could solve that concern anyway).
What I'm really asking is: if the system died, and I had to boot up via a live CD, format my linux partition and get out my backup, let's say it's on a USB stick, would I be able to simply mount the partion to /media/whatever
extract everything excluding home from the backup of /
( via sudo tar -xvpzf /media/USB/path/to/backup.tar.gz -C /media/whatever --numeric-owner
), then create a /media/whatever/home/$USER
and simply copy all my plain-text home dir there...and then reboot and get a system as it always was, or would the fact that I previously had an encrypted home dir cause some issue upon reboot? would something in the way encryptfs
start to complain (and maybe not load my home dir properly), or would things be totally fine?
I suppose this is equivalent to if right now I just deleted my encrypted /home/$USER
and /home/.encryptfs
dirs (after unmounting on another user acc etc etc) then recreated my /home/$USER
contents with the plain text files..I tried this experiment on a virtual machine and everything seemed to go through just fine, so I think encryptfs would not mess things up...(perhaps so long as the symlinks in the home dir are gone?)
backup encryption home-directory ecryptfs
backup encryption home-directory ecryptfs
edited Dec 26 '13 at 13:28
fpghost
asked Dec 24 '13 at 17:31
fpghostfpghost
83721731
83721731
bumped to the homepage by Community♦ 8 hours ago
This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed.
bumped to the homepage by Community♦ 8 hours ago
This question has answers that may be good or bad; the system has marked it active so that they can be reviewed.
2
I asked a similar but not identical question here: askubuntu.com/questions/176268/…
– ImaginaryRobots
Dec 24 '13 at 21:27
add a comment |
2
I asked a similar but not identical question here: askubuntu.com/questions/176268/…
– ImaginaryRobots
Dec 24 '13 at 21:27
2
2
I asked a similar but not identical question here: askubuntu.com/questions/176268/…
– ImaginaryRobots
Dec 24 '13 at 21:27
I asked a similar but not identical question here: askubuntu.com/questions/176268/…
– ImaginaryRobots
Dec 24 '13 at 21:27
add a comment |
1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
Option 1 is generally recommended. You don't get compression, but you can exclude sub-directories. It it can be a pain to figure out how the names have been mangled, but the directory hierarchy is preserved.
You do need to practice recovering from this or any other backup scheme, and the advice at How to safely back up the "Private" folder? is good on how to test that out.
Option 2 means you have to do something to protect the backup data.
add a comment |
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1 Answer
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1 Answer
1
active
oldest
votes
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oldest
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active
oldest
votes
Option 1 is generally recommended. You don't get compression, but you can exclude sub-directories. It it can be a pain to figure out how the names have been mangled, but the directory hierarchy is preserved.
You do need to practice recovering from this or any other backup scheme, and the advice at How to safely back up the "Private" folder? is good on how to test that out.
Option 2 means you have to do something to protect the backup data.
add a comment |
Option 1 is generally recommended. You don't get compression, but you can exclude sub-directories. It it can be a pain to figure out how the names have been mangled, but the directory hierarchy is preserved.
You do need to practice recovering from this or any other backup scheme, and the advice at How to safely back up the "Private" folder? is good on how to test that out.
Option 2 means you have to do something to protect the backup data.
add a comment |
Option 1 is generally recommended. You don't get compression, but you can exclude sub-directories. It it can be a pain to figure out how the names have been mangled, but the directory hierarchy is preserved.
You do need to practice recovering from this or any other backup scheme, and the advice at How to safely back up the "Private" folder? is good on how to test that out.
Option 2 means you have to do something to protect the backup data.
Option 1 is generally recommended. You don't get compression, but you can exclude sub-directories. It it can be a pain to figure out how the names have been mangled, but the directory hierarchy is preserved.
You do need to practice recovering from this or any other backup scheme, and the advice at How to safely back up the "Private" folder? is good on how to test that out.
Option 2 means you have to do something to protect the backup data.
edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24
Community♦
1
1
answered May 18 '15 at 18:50
nealmcbnealmcb
2,0342444
2,0342444
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2
I asked a similar but not identical question here: askubuntu.com/questions/176268/…
– ImaginaryRobots
Dec 24 '13 at 21:27