duplicity

Encrypted bandwidth-efficient backup using the rsync algorithm

What is it?

Duplicity backs directories by producing encrypted tar-format volumes and uploading them to a remote or local file server. Because duplicity uses librsync, the incremental archives are space efficient and only record the parts of files that have changed since the last backup. Because duplicity uses GnuPG to encrypt and/or sign these archives, they will be safe from spying and/or modification by the server.

The duplicity package also includes the rdiffdir utility. Rdiffdir is an extension of librsync's rdiff to directories---it can be used to produce signatures and deltas of directories as well as regular files. These signatures and deltas are in GNU tar format.

Current development status

Duplicity is not stable yet. It is thought to have a few bugs, but will work for normal usage, and should continue to work fine until you depend on it for your business or to protect important personal data. If you have questions try the mailing list. Bug reports and bug fixes can be entered through the Savannah project page.

In theory many protocols for connecting to a file server could be supported; so far ssh/scp, local file access, rsync, ftp, and Amazon S3 have been written. Currently duplicity supports deleted files, full unix permissions, directories, and symbolic links, fifos, and device files, but not hard links.

Download

The most recent version is 0.4.2, released February 2, 2006. All the code here is GPLed (free software). Duplicity is also part of the Fedora and Debian distributions of GNU/Linux.

Older versions are also available for the budding historians.

Requirements

Duplicity requires a POSIX-like operating system. It is best tested under GNU/Linux. It also requires: