Cloud backup with MCrypt and S3cmd

I will wager that one of the first things a computer teacher or resident computer guru ever said to you was: "Remember to back up your files." Over the years, I've had a couple of noteworthy backup headaches. Thankfully, the episodes were only minor mishaps, not full-fledged disasters, but these close calls made me fully understand the need for a simple and methodical backup process.

The cloud makes backups easier than ever. The configuration is no more difficult than before, and you don't have to fumble around with CDs, SSDs, backup tapes, or other physical media. Several cloud-based services specialize in cloud backup, but if you're integrating your backup system with existing scripts and standard practices, you might want a little more control over how you manage your cloud backup system. In this article, I describe how to encrypt a file or file collection using MCrypt and upload the encrypted file onto the Amazon S3 cloud. To help you better understand the encryption process and examine some additional features let's first look at two simple encryption tools.

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MCrypt [1] is a simple file encryption tool that is very suitable for encrypted backup scenarios. On Debian and Ubuntu, you can install MCrypt easily as follows:

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