[imiric]

I wouldn't trust a closed-source tool like Boxcryptor for encryption of sensitive data. Cryptomator looks interesting, though it's still a relatively new tool, and I'd be hesitant to rely on it.

For my personal backups I use a combination of tar, pixz, and GnuPG. There's no fancy deduplication, and it's definitely not efficient, but it's relatively simple and I can restore individual files with ease.

I run a variation of the following command occasionally:

  tar -C / \
    --exclude='dev/*' \
    --exclude='home/*/.cache' \
    --exclude='lost+found' \
    --exclude='mnt/*' \
    --exclude='proc/*' \
    --exclude='run/*' \
    --exclude='sys/*' \
    --exclude='tmp/*' \
    --exclude='var/cache/*' \
    --exclude='var/lib/docker*' \
    -cvf - . | pixz | gpg2 -e -r $PGPID \
    | ssh host 'cat > /backup/root.tpxz.gpg'

Then I generate an encrypted index file for quick lookups, create checksum and PAR2 repair files, and upload all of it to Wasabi, while keeping a local copy.

Wasabi may not be the cheapest storage solution, but they have no egress charges, which makes recovery a non-issue. Good speeds and S3 compatibility are also great. Don't want to run an ad for them, just a happy customer.

[russfink]

I never heard of pixz... cool! For anyone else like me, this comparison is worth a read: https://www.rootusers.com/gzip-vs-bzip2-vs-xz-performance-co...

[m0zg]

Wasabi does have some not-entirely-true advertising on their web site though. If you don't download (which you typically don't if you're doing backups), all cloud providers are cheaper than Wasabi on per-TB-mo basis. Google Coldline or Amazon Glacier, for example, are $4 TB-mo (and Google is about to roll out $1.23 TB-mo "archive" option). Azure seems to have "archive" option for $1 TB-mo (LRS Archive option, advertises the same "11 nines", tho the price is so low, there's got to be a catch)

The Wasabi offering seems to be equivalent to the "hot" storage options, which, I agree, is crazy expensive in the cloud if you do a lot of egress.

[imiric]

Indeed, Wasabi is not cheap for long-term archiving of large amounts of data. It's also potentially more expensive for short-term storage because of their 90 day minimum retention period, which they explain well in their FAQ.

But they're a great fit for my personal use case of well below 1TB of rarely accessed data, while also providing peace of mind that recovery is not an issue, so I'm OK with paying more for that. Plus, it feels good betting on an underdog. :)

[diafygi]

Isn't this basically what Duplicity does? It uses GPG to encrypt files before sending them to the remote server.

https://www.nongnu.org/duplicity/

[imiric]

It's been a few years since I used Duplicity, and while I liked it, I prefer the Unixy one-thing-well approach of composing several smaller tools to achieve what I need.

The big thing I'm missing from Duplicity are incremental backups, which is not a strong requirement for my use case as bandwidth is cheap and I can delete the oldest N backups to free up space.

But I gain a lot from using a combination of tools: I can easily replace each component, and easily improve my workflow by adding more components, such as deduplication or incremental backups if needed.

[sterwill]

Pretty much, and it stores additional indexes so it can do incremental backups. It supports many different storage targets, including S3, which I use.

[C14L]

I used to do it this way too, but recently switched to `encfs` and simply sync the encrypted directories. So only modified files (with encrypted filenames and content) are sync'ed.

[imiric]

Interesting, though that wouldn't work for off-site / cloud backups, unless you could upload the encrypted EncFS volume somehow, or don't mind leaking some file information to your storage provider if you're uploading the underlying encrypted filesystem as-is.

I use EncFS for other purposes, but be aware of its security issues[1]. This report was influenced by the founder and CTO of Boxcryptor, so I'd take it with a grain of salt, but I'd still avoid using EncFS for any important data.

[1]: https://defuse.ca/audits/encfs.htm

[hedora]

My cursory audit of encfs (not written up) revealed that, if you use it in the natural way for backup (reverse mount an unencrypted directory, and rsync the virtual, encrypted file system that exposes), then it does not use per-file salt, so each file with the same contents is encrypted to the same ciphertext.

This was years ago. It might be fixed.

[judge2020]

I use Cryptomator but it does "phone home" for version checks so I keep an old version of the installer just in case.

[kayoone]

i guess a main point for Boxcryptor is easy access through mobile apps, does your solution provide that?

[imiric]

Accessing backups via Termux and SSH on Android is easy enough for me, but certainly not user friendly in the popular sense.

Though I'm OK with trading some usability features for security and peace of mind.