Contributed by jose on from the backups dept.
I'm developing an online backup system -- sort of like rsync, but all the data on the server is encrypted and it allows access to old versions and deleted files. It's now ready for other people to try it out:
http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
If you're interested in automatic backup to a central server, then please give it a try and let me know how you get on. I don't think it's quite ready for production use yet, but I have been using it on a number of systems for a while.
If you don't have a suitable server, I may be able to offer an account on my server in exchange for feedback on the system.
I would also appreciate people looking over my use of cryptography, to make sure it is as secure as it should be. There are some programmers notes in the distribution archive which will help to evaluate this.
It's primarily written for OpenBSD, but I have have done initial ports to some other platforms. However, getting it to run well on OpenBSD is my primary concern, hence asking for testers in this forum.
I am releasing it under a modified BSD license, and intend to change this to a more conventional one as soon as I can. (see the web site for details)
Thanks,
Ben"
(Comments are closed)
By RC () on
This might make things a lot easier than my selection of scripts (using ssh and rsync). The one thing I'm not sure about is encryption... It uses extra space, and isn't all that necessary when I've already got physcial security. I hope that's easy to disable.
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By sthen () on
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
http://www.nongnu.org/duplicity/
Although there are big differences between the two systems which may make one more suitable than the other for your application. I'll be writing up a comparison later today.
By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
However, it's not bad. Backups are generally between 50% and 75% of their space on disc. Depending on your data, of course.
There is no way to disable it.
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By Anonymous Coward () on
me keeps unenecrypted backups
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
However, you only need to conventionally back up one piece of information once, not a huge amount of information at regular intervals.
By submicron () on
I'm really glad to see someone doing work in this area. This is something that I think a number of us do with homebrew scripts right now. I'll definitely start playing with this over the weekend.
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
I have a mailing list for discussions and annoucements, details on the site shortly.
It's good to see the enthusiasm for this project!
By P. Pruett () ppruett@webengr.com on http://www.cocoavillagepublishing.com/development/
backup of must have stuff, like right before trying a remote upgrade. have notes on this at
http://www.cocoavillagepublishing.com/development/tools/openbsd/tips/upgrading/
(2 things to watch out for)
(one - watch out, unlike tar pax will use the / in the path name when restoring unless you use the -s option!!! and you will restore to same place!!!)
(two - if cut/paste from this post watch out for were line was cut during wrap)
PAXDATE=`date +%Y%m%d%H%M`
### no compression on remote, compress afterwards
ssh root@remotecomputer "pax -w -x cpio -b 5120 /etc /root /var /home /usr/local /usr/share" | gzip > /storage/remotecomputer.$PAXDATE.pax.gz
### no compression on remote, compress afterwards
### with -s option to remove root /
ssh root@remotecomputer "pax -w -x cpio -b 5120 -s ',^//*,,' /root /var /home /usr/local /usr/share" | gzip > /storage/remotecomputer.$PAXDATE.pax.gz
### compression on remote
ssh root@remotecomputer "pax -wz -x cpio -b 5120 /etc /root /var /home /usr/local /usr/share" > /storage/remotecomputer.$PAXDATE.pax.gz
### compression on remote
### with -s option to remove leading /
ssh root@remotecomputer "pax -wz -x cpio -b 5120 -s ',^//*,,' /etc /root /var /home /usr/local /usr/share" > /storage/remotecomputer.$PAXDATE.pax.gz
By deem0n () dima@yasp.com on http://www.yasp.com/
it hink it is good idea to add security features to that one, instead of inventing something again.
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
Box Backup is designed to be really easy to install and use, yet secure.
Bacula I think solves different problems. There is room for more than one solution -- I wrote this because nothing fitted what I needed to achieve.
By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/comparison.html
(posted since you wrote your comment)
By andre () on
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
By Anonymous Coward () on
using some servers
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
Sounds complicated to get going.
By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
It's only the connection to the server which is encrypted.
By medium sized potato () on
Basically they send in a login (non-system login), then start sending the files. The files and dirs get thrown as they are into /backupdir/dd_mm_yy/username/.
The /backupdir gets shared read-only over samba, so that people can pick out the files they want.
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
How far have you got? If you'd like to think about porting this, then email me. (says he, being very optimistic)
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By medium sized potato () on
I have only got the GUI ( grrrr, I loath writing win32 GUI's ) to write and its a goer.. I have a number of people with dollars who want it done, so I need to.
But there are things I want to improve on, so I might have a peek at your stuff and see if its worth just writing a win32 client backend and putting the existing GUI in front of it.
Dont hold your breath though :)
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
If you do, I'd be interested in any comments on code quality you might have. (even if you don't use it)
By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
By Adrien Kunysz () a_kunysz@y!.com on http://krunch.servebeer.com/~krunch/
If you encrypt a file, change the original then encrypt it again, the two encrypted files will be completly different. Uploading changes isn't that much efficient. Or did I miss something ?
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
In practise, this means you split the file up into many blocks, each of which is individually compressed and encrypted. Checksums are stored and processed separately, so the client doesn't need to download and decrypt them to do the rsync-like comparison.
It's surprisingly efficient -- almost as good as rsync itself.
By Anonymous Coward () on
Please find a way to rewrite it into thoughtfully portable C if you want to really be multiplatform.
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By Ian McWilliam () i dot mcwilliam at uws dot edu dot au on mailto:i dot mcwilliam at uws dot edu dot au
By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
I'm not convinced that C++ would make any program less portable. It's how you use the underlying OS which causes portability problems, and since C++ uses the C API to do this you have exactly the same issues with C and C++.
I could see that there might be issues revolving around some newer C++ features or with STL implementations, but these are things of the past. If your compiler installation is less than four years old, I would be surprised if you had problems.
There are distint advantages in using C++. Done well, it can decrease development time and increase correctness and reliability.
So, what things have caused you problems?
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By Anonymous Coward () on
This is a C++ compiler & library maturity issue, which in turn lags the spec maturity and all this reflects the spec's complexity. Maybe in a few years this will be a distant memory of pain long passed, like the move from K&R-with-extensions to the original ANSI C.
But today, my comment stands. Arbitrary C++ programs off the net are far less likely to compile out of the box than arbitrary C programs. By a very noticeable margin. And the best intentions of the authors might not be able to solve the problem because the compile environment is what's causing the portability problems.
I could also go on for ages about why C++ is bad as a language, but that's a religious debate that belongs in a better forum than this.
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
For this particular project, which originally targetting just OpenBSD, the use of C++ gives a sensible compromise between ease of authoring and ease of porting.
I'm not looking to conquer the world, just solve a problem for myself. Being able to solve other people's problems on other platforms is just a nice bonus.
Anyway, if it was listed as compiling on all the platforms you were interested in, I hope you'd take a look at a C++ program.
By zerash () zerash@metawire.org on http://www.metawire.org/
Box Backup definatelly does that and more.
<3
-zerash
P.S. Ben did not pay me to write this :) 3
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By Ben Summers () on http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
Make sure you pick up the latest version.