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This guide shows how to use Amazon S3 with duplicity to make secure GPG encrypted automated daily incremental backups (snapshots) of a Linux server or desktop. I have been using this method on various servers for several months and it has proved to be a reliable, secure, cheap, and robust method to create automated backups.

I have used this method on Fedora, YDL, and CentOS but the instructions should equally apply to other Linux distributions including Debian and Ubuntu. It will even work on OS X using the MacPorts version of duplicity.

Aims of this guide

This guide explains how to create a simple wrapper script for duplicity that allows you to automatically create GPG encrypted incremental backups that are saved to an Amazon S3 bucket. The script is designed to be executed as a daily cron job so that incremental snapshot backups are created each day. The script creates a full backup set on the 1st day of each month (or when an appropriate full backup cannot be found) and then creates incremental backups on subsequent days.

This guide provides a walk-through of how to create the GPG encryption key, and provides full scripts and example usage for both backup and restore. You could easily adapt the backup script so that it makes full backups each week, or otherwise adjust it to suit your individual needs.

This guide is written with the general Linux user in mind: you do need some understanding of basic linux concepts such as cron, permissions, and directory structures.

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RPMs for the Broadcom 802.11 STA Wireless Driver are now available from the rpmfusion.org repos for Fedora 8, 9 and 10.

This is an official-release of Broadcom's IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux device driver for use with Broadcom's BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4321-, and BCM4322-based hardware. This driver also supports the incorrectly identified BCM4328 chipset which is actually a BCM4321 or BCM4322 chipset.

Previously I explained how to build the Broadcom STA driver from source but now the installation and updates can all be taken care of using yum and the rpmfusion non-free repository. Just follow these two simple steps:

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Update 15 November 2008: Just a note to mention that I've packaged this up into an RPM and so this driver is now available as an RPM in the rpmfusion repos for Fedora 8, 9 and 10.

See this post for instructions of how to install using the RPM version (much easier!).

Update 26 January 2009: These instructions are now fairly outdated. The latest releases of the broadcom driver don't require the same patches as mentioned here to make them build correctly against recent kernels. I highly recommend using the RPM installation instructions linked above, or if you require help with building the latest drivers please drop me a message or leave a comment below.

Happy, happy days! At long last, a Linux Broadcom driver for the BCM4328 chipset that doesn't require ndiswrapper and Windows drivers. For me, this is really, really huge: ndiswrapper has never worked properly with NetworkManager using WPA security but this new Broadcom driver seems bullet-proof. It is even supposed to support 802.11n standard but I can't verify that just yet.

The source packages currently available from Broadcom (version 5.10.27.6) don't build on the current Fedora 9 kernel (2.6.26.5-45) and probably won't compile on any newer kernel either. Digging around a bit I found a patch that makes the driver build successfully.

Great, but that's not the whole story: I then found that with the new driver I was unable to SSH or telnet into any remote servers - bummer. However, some more digging turned up another patch that fixes this problem. With these two patches in place the new driver really rocks. For the first time in 10 months (since I bought my MacBook) I can actually connect to WPA secured networks using NetworkManager - no more fiddling around with wpa_supplicant scripts for me!

Anyhow, here's a little how-to guide to install the new Broadcom driver in Fedora 9. Note: I'm a little unsure of which Broadcom chipsets this driver actually supports but I can confirm that it works beautifully with the BCM4328 which is standard on MacBook 3,1 and 4,1 versions.

Important note: Since writing this guide Broadcom have released an updated driver (v 5.10.27.11). The updated driver and updated patches can be downloaded here along with the original driver/patches mentioned in this guide. Adjust the instructions below according to the version you are using.

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