How to backup gpg keys on paper

Having a reliable backup of our GPG (Gnu Privacy Guard) secret key is not optional: the key represents our identity, and loosing it could potentially be a disaster. Creating a backup of our keys and sub-keys is quite a simple thing to do using gpg, and the resulting files can be easily backed up on one or more devices. Electronic devices such USB drives or hard disks, however, tend to fail, and usually in the most inappropriate times; therefore as an extreme resort, we may want to print our keys to paper.

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How to create incremental system backups with Timeshift on Linux

Linux-based operating systems, if well configured, are really stable; however, since bad things can always happen, it is a good idea to regularly create backups. As we saw in previous articles, there are many types of backup, and many possible backup strategies which can be implemented on Linux, using free and open source software. In this article we focus on Timeshift, an application which allows us to create incremental backups of our Linux system. The tool is similar to the Apple Time Machine, and can work as a frontend for rsync or use the BTRFS filesystem snapshot feature under the hood.

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How to backup data with Déjà Dup on Linux

Déjà Dup is a free an open source program we can use to easily create incremental data backups on Linux. The program is basically a graphical frontend for Duplicity; its goal is to hide complexity, be simple and easy to use. Backups created with Déjà Dup can be encrypted and stored locally and remotely, even using storage space provided by services like Google Drive.

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Introduction to Borg Backup

Borg is a very useful application we can use to create deduplicating backups on Linux. Free and open source software, it is, for the most part, written in Python and supports data compression and encryption. Thanks to the data de-duplication feature, only data which actually changes is archived, and this let us optimize both disk space and execution time. Borg is really easy to install, since it is packaged and included in the repositories of the most used Linux distributions.

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Rsync examples in Linux

Rsync examples in Linux

rsync stands for “remote sync” and is a powerful command line utility for synchronizing directories either on a local system or with remote machines. It’s built into nearly every Linux system by default and this tutorial will help you to understand rsync better by providing you most common rsync examples administrators use to keep the data synchronised across multiple server/hosts.

Some users mistakenly think of rsync as a file copying tool, like cp or scp.While there’s some overlap, rsync excels in synchronization, specifically. In other words, it can take a source directory and make an identical destination directory.

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Backing up a MySQL database on Linux

Linux commands to back up and restore MySQL database

It’s always a good idea to take frequent backups of your MySQL or MariaDB databases. They can potentially contain thousands of lines of irreplaceable data. Many users may be confused on how to back up their databases at first, as the process differs quite a bit from backing up ordinary files. The process of restoring a backup must also be known, as there’s no point in having a backup if the user cannot reliably restore it.

In this guide, we’ll go over various command line examples to back up and restore MySQL or MariaDB databases on a Linux system. You can then use these commands to make regular backups of your databases, or even add them to a Bash script that can do most of the work for you. Another option is to configure cron to make regularly scheduled backups of your databases.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to back up MySQL or MariaDB database (one or multiple)
  • How to restore a MySQL or MariaDB database backup

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