Simple server backup workflow with age?

[Brixy]

Hello guys,

I am not a crypto expert but have been using age for several years, particularly as a pass alternative and for file exchange. Thanks very much for this great tool.

For server backups of project folders I currently use a simple gocryptfs workflow:

mkdir mnt-encrypted mnt-remote
gocryptfs -reverse my-folder mnt-encrypted
sshfs user@server.url mnt-remote
rsync […]

If possible I would like to replace gocrypfs with age.

• Does anyone use an age workflow for a similar use case, and how exactly?
• Why do you prefer age to other tools for this use case?

Thank you very much!

[RollinRolanding]

I am also no crypto expert but I incorporated age into my backup process. Basically my script does the below followed by a bunch AWS S3 multipart upload fun:

tar -c --use-compress-program=pigz /something | age -r <me>

I'm using pigz in place of tar cz i.e., gzip because I'm archiving fairly large directories, ~2-3TB.

If you also need to chunk the encrypted files, you can pipe the above to e.g., tar ... | age ... | split -b $SPLIT_SIZE - "${FILE}.part-"

[Brixy]

Hello @RollinRolanding,

excellent! Thanks a lot for your advice and the code example. That looks very promising. I will play with it and try to integrate your code into my workflow.

Restic and other excellent tools seems to do 'too much'. A simple and future proof age workflow for encrypted backups seems very sensible to me.

Thank you very much