Some weeks ago I removed some files on my system I wish I didn't cause I still needed them.

Since I use some encrypted containers in dropbox I figured I could recover them from this nifty service. But in the logs of dropbox those files are obviously also encrypted. So that was a no go.

Therefore I started looking for backup solutions. The first one I tried was backintime, very easy to use, clean GUI interface but failed multiple times in restoring some files.

Looking for a more decent piece of software I found rsnapshot

And hell I like it. It's not a GUI interface which is a plus for me, it don't use a huge amount of disk space for all the backups, instead it uses hard links between non changed files and it's completely indepented and automizable by cron.

So I bought myself a lacie slim P9223 SSD external USB 3.0 disk from about 120GB only used for backing up my system.

Encryption

Since I want my data to be back upped in a secure way I chose to encrypt the entire disk. I will only use it for this backup purpose so it doesn't matter. To do so I followed a tutorial I found on the net which describes very clearly every step in the process to achieve an encrypted disk using cryptsetup.

The data I backup are the decrypted encfs containers from within my dropbox instance. That way dropbox contains my data in an encrypted way so I can synchronize them between multiple machines and I still have a backup on my external hard disk in case of disaster happens.

UDEV rule

Every time an usb device is connected it is attached to another random /dev/sdX pointer. Since I wrote a little script to mount/umount this encrypted disk I needed a persistent pointer. Using some nifty udev rule based on the serial of the device this issue is solved by always attaching this disk to the /dev/backup pointer..

Get your devices short serial:

    $ udevadm info -q all -n /dev/sdX1 | grep SERIAL_SHORT
    E: ID_SERIAL_SHORT=00000000000000000000

Write the udev rule itself to attach the device to the /dev/backup pointer:

    $ sudo vim /etc/udev/rules.d/66-persistent-backup-disk.rules
    KERNEL=="sd?1", SUBSYSTEMS=="block", ENV{ID_SERIAL_SHORT}=="00000000000000000000", SYMLINK+="backup"

That way the device is always attached to /dev/backup and could therefore be used to decrypt and mount:

    sudo cryptsetup open /dev/backup backup
    sudo mount /dev/mapper/backup /mnt/backup/

or umounted and encrypted:

    sudo umount /mnt/backup
    sudo cryptsetup luksClose backup

Rsnapshot

I read the wiki page of rsnapshot from archlinux and followed their configuration instructions and adapted those to my own preferences. After this configuration has been saved and tested I added some cron magic to automate those backups during my lunch break.

    # Backup schedule (rsnapshot)
    0 */3 * * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot hourly
    30 12 * * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily
    45 12 * * 1 /usr/bin/rsnapshot weekly
    0 13 1 * 1 /usr/bin/rsnapshot monthly

Fsck

I ran into some ext4 troubles on my encrypted filesystem, it took me a while to figure out how I could resolve them. You had to open the encrypted container without actually mounting the device.

    sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdX# SOMENAME

Once that's done you could use fsck to manually fix the filesystem.

    sudo fsck.ext4 /dev/mapper/SOMENAME

or let fsck automatically fix the filesystem.

    sudo fsck.ext4 -y /dev/mapper/SOMENAME

If everything got fixed you could mount the partition and use the fixed filesystem again.

    sudo mount /mnt/backup

So from now on my data is back upped on an encrypted USB hard disk without using any fancy pansy GUI interface :)

Hence feel free to comment if there are some quirks you tackled another way around!