1:00 AM
El DiPablo
So the reason I am writing this post is because I was searching for something very similar myself recently. I recently setup a password server at my office, and wanted an easy way to back it up in case I ever had to restore it. We use Microsoft DPM at my company, and it doesn’t really back up Linux, so I needed a way to copy the configs and such for my server over to a Windows box to be backed up to tape.
I decided I wanted to compress the install directory for my program into an archive, then copy over to a Windows file server. Since it contained passwords, even though they are stored using AES encryption, I wanted to password protect the archive for another layer of security. Normally for Linux I like to create tar.gz files, however no matter where I searched, I couldn’t find an article on how to password protect it. I found a lot of people encrypting their tarballs with GPG, but that wasn’t what I wanted.
Next I thought about using zip, so I installed zip in my Linux server. Zip has an –e switch for password protecting, but it prompts you. I couldn’t figure out a good way to script that. Then I sat back and had an aha moment. Why not use 7zip?
I wrote a few months ago about how easy it is to use 7zip for a backup program in Windows. Well, 7zip is available for Linux too! To install it run the following:
sudo apt-get install p7zip-full
Once installed, I used the following script to create a 7z archive of my directory with password protection!
#!/bin/bash
NOW=$(date +"%b-%d-%y")
7za a "/path/to/archive/DIRECTORYNAME-$NOW.7z" "/path/to/directory/to/backup" -pYOURPASSWORD
If you don’t speak shell, what I’ve done above is created a variable called NOW that puts the date in a MM-DD-YY format. I do that so I can time stamp the filename of my archive. I do that by adding the $NOW in the archive name. Make sure to change the above to fit your environment. Also, make a note that there is NO space between the –p switch and the password.
There you have it, it will now create a 7z archive that is password protected for somewhat secure transportation and/or offsite backup!
Do you do something different to password protect archives on your Linux server? Let us know in the comments!
