Question about Espionage and Crashplan

[willmacdonald]

Hi,

I have a question about using Crashplan together with Espionage.

I use Crashplan to backup about 70GB of data to their cloud. I am very happy with the service.

I would like to use Espionage to encrypt email and documents folder.  I would prefer the off-site backups to be un-encrypted. I am mostly concerned about laptop being lost/stolen and would like to be able to retrieve individual files from Crashplan.

Should I add Crashplan to the whitelist and let Crashplan access the folder whilst Mail is running ? It's OK if crashplan backups an encrypted and and un-encrypted version of Mail. Disk space on crashplan is unlimited.

Thanks,

Will

PS Crashplan is a Java app if that makes any difference

[greg]

Hi willmacdonald,

Yes, add CrashPlan to Espionage's whitelist. Also, sometimes backup programs use tiny helper programs to do the actual work, so you may still get prompted to unlock a folder, in which case you should use the prompt to whitelist the helper program (hopefully it will have "crashplan" in its name if such a program exists).

To backup the non-encrypted data, the folders will have to be unlocked. Then, choose Settings > Backup, and then click the "Change Selection..." button. You'll see a list of folders, and at the top-most level, alongside your hard drive, you'll see the names of the unlocked folders. Check the checkbox to back up these folders, and the folder contents will be backed up unencrypted (but, like all files, encrypted by CrashPlan's service).

You can also have CrashPlan backup the encrypted folders as well. Usually telling CrashPlan to backup your home folder will have it automatically do this, so long as your encrypted folders are located inside of your home folder (which they usually are).

Hope that helps! :-)

[willmacdonald]

Thanks for clarifying this.

Will

[L2D]

I am trying to achieve the same thing - Backup unencrypted files.  I haven't had any success though.

To backup the non-encrypted data, the folders will have to be unlocked. Then, choose Settings > Backup, and then click the "Change Selection..." button. You'll see a list of folders, and at the top-most level, alongside your hard drive, you'll see the names of the unlocked folders. Check the checkbox to back up these folders, and the folder contents will be backed up unencrypted (but, like all files, encrypted by CrashPlan's service).

This is what I've tried:
- Unlock folder, in Prefs - enable backup, uncheck backup when encrypted and unencrypted, Backup Now
- Unlock folder,  in Prefs - enable backup, uncheck backup when encrypted, Backup Now
- Unlock folder, copy actual files from hard drive to external.  They only appear when the source folder is unlocked

You mention having a "Settings > Backup", then a "Change Selection..." button.  I don't see that.

Thanks!
Lori

[greg]

You mention having a "Settings > Backup", then a "Change Selection..." button.  I don't see that.

Yes, that is important for getting this to work. I uninstalled Crashplan so I can't try this out right now, but it's there. You may want to contact the CrashPlan folks if you don't see that option and have them guide you through it based on my advice above.

[L2D]

Oh... so that was specific instructions for Crashplan.  I'm not using Crashplan.  I just wanted to make a normal backup of the files in the unencrypted form.

Thanks.
Lori

[greg]

Oh... so that was specific instructions for Crashplan.

Yes, this topic is about Espionage and Crashplan.

I just wanted to make a normal backup of the files in the unencrypted form.

It depends on how you're doing the backup. Espionage's backups do not do unencrypted backups. If you're going to use something else, you'll need to tell the backup software to backup the contents of unlocked folders, and how you do this will likely depend on whatever backup solution you're using. The instructions above for Crashplan can be used as a guide for the basic concepts.

[L2D]

It depends on how you're doing the backup. Espionage's backups do not do unencrypted backups. If you're going to use something else, you'll need to tell the backup software to backup the contents of unlocked folders, and how you do this will likely depend on whatever backup solution you're using. The instructions above for Crashplan can be used as a guide for the basic concepts.

Hi Greg,

I followed the Crashplan as a guide but nothing worked.  As I mentioned in my original post, I tried it three different ways but none of them copied the unencrypted files.  I even tried just copying them without any backup software and that didn't work either.

Thanks.
Lori

[greg]

As I mentioned in my original post, I tried it three different ways but none of them copied the unencrypted files.  I even tried just copying them without any backup software and that didn't work either.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Espionage's backups do not backup files unencrypted, so that takes care of the first two things you mentioned.

As for attempting to manually copy them, what you probably did was copy the symlink, not the contents of the folder. Don't copy the "folder" when it's unlocked, open it and copy the files that are inside. Copying the folder when it's unlocked doesn't copy anything other than a symlink (an alias).

[L2D]

Hi Greg,

Greg wrote: As I mentioned in my previous post, Espionage's backups do not backup files unencrypted, so that takes care of the first two things you mentioned.

Yes, I understand that Espionage's integrated backup system doesn't backup unencrypted files which is why I was NOT trying to do it that way.  Rather, I was trying to manually copy the unlocked files on the hard drive.  I'll try what you suggested.

Thanks.
Lori

[greg]

I'll try what you suggested.

Thanks.
Lori

OK, and if you're interested in the details of how Espionage works, there's this FAQ item from Espionage's documentation that might clear some things up.

[pmcarrion]

I use CrashPlan for offline (onsite/offsite) and online backups. I also use SuperDuper for bootable backups.

I have whitelisted both applications at Espionage's Tool menu->Ignore List->Add Application->Select "Whitelisted".
Will this allow CrashPlan/SuperDuper to access the contents of my Espionage'd folder at any time for backup? Backup happens automatically every 15 minutes and I'm not always on the computer to unlock the folder.

Unfortunately Espionage's backup system is based in rsync, which has issues with Time Capsule and other NAS. Backups take forever and get corrupted almost immediately. It even causes the Finder and Espionage to hang while backing up to the Time Capsule or NAS. I had to wait 10 minutes for each process to reactivate in order to disable the native backup system. I had to reformat the NAS as the Finder wasn't able to delete many of the files.

Espionage needs an option to allow whitelisted backup applications to access the contents of the encrypted folders on demand and relock the folder automatically when it is no longer accessed by the backup application.

Please consider adding this option in a future release of Espionage.

[mike]

I use CrashPlan for offline (onsite/offsite) and online backups. I also use SuperDuper for bootable backups.

I have whitelisted both applications at Espionage's Tool menu->Ignore List->Add Application->Select "Whitelisted".
Will this allow CrashPlan/SuperDuper to access the contents of my Espionage'd folder at any time for backup? Backup happens automatically every 15 minutes and I'm not always on the computer to unlock the folder.

Unfortunately Espionage's backup system is based in rsync, which has issues with Time Capsule and other NAS. Backups take forever and get corrupted almost immediately. It even causes the Finder and Espionage to hang while backing up to the Time Capsule or NAS. I had to wait 10 minutes for each process to reactivate in order to disable the native backup system. I had to reformat the NAS as the Finder wasn't able to delete many of the files.

Espionage needs an option to allow whitelisted backup applications to access the contents of the encrypted folders on demand and relock the folder automatically when it is no longer accessed by the backup application.

Please consider adding this option in a future release of Espionage.

Hi pmcarrion,

We received an email from you about this, I replied to your email about this.

The short answer is that by whitelisting both apps, it will allow CrashPlan/SuperDuper to access the encrypted folders to backup if it wasn't unlocked yet. It will not however allow those apps to access the decrypted contents inside the folder.

If you want to always back up the encrypted/locked folders, what you can do is tell Espionage to back up your data into a local "backups" folder and then you can use your own tools to back up that "backups" folder. In this case, you do not have to wait for Espionage to unlock or lock, the backups will always be there, in a accessible state for your backup apps to process.

We'll consider your request about adding the ability for Espionage to remember the password for the locked folders for specific apps and have it lock after the apps are closed. Thank you for letting us know that this would be useful for you.