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Email-backup on a low end VPS
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Email-backup on a low end VPS

pechspilzpechspilz Member
edited March 2013 in Help

I'm thinking about using one of my impulse-bought (most of you probably know what I'm talking about) VPS to backup all my emails. It looks like https://github.com/RaymiiOrg/NoPriv seems to be a good way to to this. I have a VPS with 30 GB of disk space, however it's an OpenVZ VPS. I already figured out how to use FUSE and encfs to encrypt all mails. I could write a remote ssh script to set the password once the container gets rebooted. Am I right that anyone with root access on the node itself will be able to access my mail folders once I mount them in my container? And anyone else who's able to break free from a container-jail as well?

Comments

  • Why not s3? So much cheaper.

  • I doubt that ($17/yr).

  • DylanDylan Member

    How much space are you actually going to be using? S3 may or may not be cheaper depending on that and how often you'll be downloading your backups.

  • I have about 15 GB of email to store (a few megs of new mails each day) but since I already spent $17 on a VPS I don't really need, what's the point of giving Amazon my money.

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    @pechspilz said: Am I right that anyone with root access on the node itself will be able to access my mail folders once I mount them in my container? And anyone else who's able to break free from a container-jail as well?

    Yes.

    S3 may not be cheaper, but Glacier almost certainly would be. $.01 per GB per month. Your $17/year would buy you 142GB/mo(($17 / .01) / 12).

    There's bandwidth...but only if you restore, as bandwidth into Glacier is free.

  • Sounds interesting but AFAIK there's no free, open-source IMAP -> Glacier (delta) backup solution with a nice, fast front end on the server side.

  • sleddogsleddog Member
    edited March 2013

    @pechspilz said: It looks like https://github.com/RaymiiOrg/NoPriv seems to be a good way to to this.

    That looks like a means of making your email browsable (though the reference to Thunderbird is confusing). Do you need that? If not, then you can backup your mail with rsync (over SSH).

    Am I right that anyone with root access on the node itself will be able to access my mail folders once I mount them in my container? And anyone else who's able to break free from a container-jail as well?

    Yes. The first calls into question the integrity of your provider. If you feel you can't put this basic trust in them, then don't do it. The second is about the security of OpenVz. If you don't have confidence in it then don't do it.

    In either case, a KVM or Xen solution from a provider you trust might be preferable.

  • bdtechbdtech Member
    edited March 2013

    Glacier is cheap for freezing and tucking away data. There's some fine print to read on requests, restores, and deletes. I uploaded about 25gb and 8 bucks or so were requests per 1k but of course data storage per gb is dirt cheap

  • I backup my emails and web files to S3 each day. I use duplicity so it only sends the delta changes twice a week. I spend less than $1 a month and I have about 2G of data to backup.

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