[sllug-members]: Encrypted backup tapes (Resolved)

[M. Alton jensen]

Mike Bourgeous wrote:
> Might the ancient UNIX art of pipes be useful?  I don't use tapes
> personally, but something like:
> 
> tar -zcv / | (your favorite compression) | (your favorite encryption -
> GPG?) > /dev/tape
> 
> Mike Bourgeous

Finally, I had some spare time to mess around with this.  I had to do
add in another command w/certain options to get it working with my
specific tape drive (a Sony SDT-5000)...
Here's what I ended up with to encrypt to tape:
tar cf - files | gpg -e -r "my key name" | dd of=/dev/st0 conv=sync obs=512
And to decrypt:
dd if=/dev/st0 conv=sync | gpg -d | tar xv

My smaller tests of these commands showed that it worked w/o problems.
I'm currently doing a test restore of 12GB of data to verify that it is
working in a "real world" scenario for me.

I might try these same commands out with aespipe when I get a chance,
but due to time constraints I make no guarantees (why fix what ain't broke?)

-Alt