Writing CDs (Backing up your Mail)

You shouldn’t backup anything to compact disc media. However if you’re dumb enough to back up to a unreliable media (as I once did), you mind find the following old tips helpful:

I never ever remember this. So here I am recording the information about burning CDs with :

mkisofs -o /tmp/backup.iso .
cdrecord -scanbus
cdrecord -v speed=12 dev=0,0,0 -data /tmp/backup.iso

I back up my mail every so often. I generally keep my mail. My last backup of mail was 50 megs, compressed! GULP.

tar cvf backup.tar Mail/
bzip2 backup.tar

Encrypting my mail:

gpg -e -r hendry backup.tar.bz2

To decrypt, word of advice, do not use gpg -d, just use:

gpg backup.tar.bz2.gpg