RSYNCRYPTO(1) Rsyncrypto User Manual RSYNCRYPTO(1)NAMErsyncrypto - rsync friendly encryption
SYNOPSISrsyncrypto [options] srcfile dstfile keyfile key
rsyncrypto [options] -r srcdir dstdir keysdir key
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the rsyncrypto command.
rsyncrypto is a utility that encrypts a file (or a directory structure)
in a way that ensures that local changes to the plain text file will
result in local changes to the cipher text file. This, in turn, ensures
that doing rsync to synchronize the encrypted files to another machine
will have only a small impact on rsync's efficiency.
rsyncrypto will encrypt files using a symmetric block cipher (AES).
Each file is encrypted using a unique key. The file key is stored in
two locations. One is the "key" file, and the second is inside the
encrypted file itself. The second copy is encrypted using a RSA public
key, which can be shared for all encrypted files.
Decrypting the file can take place in one of two forms:
Warm Decryption
keyfile is used to decrypt srcfile into dstfile.
Cold Decryption
If keyfile is lost and key is the private key for the RSA
encryption, extract and create keyfile from the encrypted src‐
file, and create both keyfile and dstfile.
If both keyfile and the private key are not available, decryption can‐
not take place. Typically, this means that you would either want to
transfer the encrypted files in whatever way (secure or insecure, but
probably rsync :), and keep the plain text file, as well as the key
file, secure. As long as you saved the RSA private key, you can recon‐
struct them both.
PARAMETERS
The parameters meaning depend on the existence of the -r and -d flags.
srcfile or srcdir
This is the source for the operation. This will be the plain
text file for encryption, and the cipher text file for decryp‐
tion. If the -r option is given, srcdir is the directory from
which files are to be encrypted/decrypted. Otherwise, srcfile is
the file to be encrypted/decrypted. In any case, src must exist
prior to running rsyncrypto.
dstfile or dstdir
Similar to src, this is the destination of the operation. It
will be the plain text to be created if -d was given, or the
encrypted file otherwise.
keyfile or keydir
The file holding the symmetric key for the encryption, or a
directory in which symmetric key files reside. If the later, the
key files will have the same name as the plain text files.
key This file can either be a X509 certificate holding a public key,
or a PEM format private key. The private key is never needed
unless a cold decryption is required. See the req(1) or x509(1)
manual pages for more info.
If dst does not exist, it will be created. The directory in which it is
to be created must exist prior to running rsyncrypto.
If encrypting, and a symmetric key for the file is found, the same
parameters will be used for the encryption unless the --fr or --fk
options are used. If that's the case, the key file is going to be
replaced with the correct parameters.
OPTIONS
These programs follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long
options starting with two dashes (`-').
-h, --help
Show summary of options.
-V, --version
Print out the current version number.
-d, --decrypt
Decrypt src into dst. The default behavior is to encrypt src
into dst, and create keyfile if it does not exist.
-r, --recurse
Recursively encrypt/decrypt an entire directory structure. All
files under srcdir will be encrypted to files of the same name
and path (almost, see --trim) under dstdir. If not already
there, a key file will be created for each file under keydir.
--filelist
The first argument is a pointer to a file (or "-" for stdin)
that has a list of files to process. Any name ending with a "/"
is taken to be a directory in recursive mode, and any other name
is a file name. The second argument is a directory where the
files are encrypted to. --filelist and -r are mutually exclu‐
sive.
-c, --changed
Check the src and destination modified time (see --modify-win‐
dow) prior to performing the operation. If the modified time is
the same, assume that the files are also the same, and skip the
operation. Notice that unlike rsync, file sizes are not com‐
pared. This is because the file size is expected to change dur‐
ing the encryption (and thus decryption) operation.
--risky-writes
Usually, when rsyncrypto writes a file, it uses a temporary name
and moves the file to its final name when successfully done.
This serves two purposes. During encryption, this prevents the
false sense of security that may arise in case of an rsyncrypto
interruption by preventing a partial file from being present
(and in case of an update, by keeping the old backup). This also
ensures that restarting rsyncrypto will enable it to correctly
detect whether the operation needs to be repeated. During
decryption, this prevents overwriting a file until we are cer‐
tain we can decrypt its source.
The main problem with this approach is that, if the file being
written is large, the file system needs to have enough space for
two copies of it for the duration of the operation. Also, if
hard links are maintained, the default rsyncrypto behavior will
break the link.
Specify --risky-writes to make rsyncrypto directly overwrite the
existing file using the final name.
--modify-window=num
Only applicable when -c is in effect. When comparing file modi‐
fication times, treat as equal modification times that are num
seconds apart. Default value is zero.
This option is most useful when the encrypted file is stored on
a FAT file system. FAT can only store modification time with a
2 seconds accuracy. This may result in the modification time
changing between original and encrypted file. In such a case,
--modify-window=1 should be used.
--export-changes=logfile
Whenever encrypting or deleting a file, write the file's name to
logfile. This allows passing logfile to rsync(1) using the
--include-from rsync option.
This option is mostly useful if rsyncrypto is used to repeatedly
encrypt a huge directory tree, and then using rsync to synchro‐
nize it remotely. The use of this option allows focusing rsync
on only those files that are known to have changed, rather than
have it send the entire file list to the remote machine, making
the rsync operation faster. It should be noted that rsync ver‐
sion 3 starts the actual file transfer while it is still trans‐
ferring the file list, making the performance gain from this
option less noticeable.
When using this option in conjunction with rsync, keep in mind
that logfile is zeroed out before being written into. This means
that unless there is at least one completely successful rsync
operation for each rsyncrypto invocation, it is possible to have
files that have been changed on disk by a previous invocation of
rsyncrypto, but were over written by a later invocation and do
not show up in the latest version of logfile. In other words, if
rsyncrypto is run more than once between two completely success‐
ful invocations of rsync, it is possible for logfile not to be
complete. Use this option at your own risk!
It is highly recommended that you upgrade to rsync version 3 or
higher rather than rely on this option.
-n, --name-encrypt=translation_file
Encrypt the file name. If this option is specified, this means
that file names are encrypted as well. This is done by changing
the name of the encrypted file to a random string of characters,
and storing the translation in the file given as parameter. If
working in recursive mode, this file is automatically also
included in the encryption, and is given the fixed name
"filemap". This is done so that decryption of the file names is
possible when the symmetric keys are lost.
--ne-nesting=num
When the --name-encrypt option is used, by default all mangled
file names are stored in a single directory. When encrypting
large directory trees, this can result in rather big directo‐
ries. Using "--ne-nesting" will split the files to sub directo‐
ries, according to random bits that are part of the encrypted
file name. "n" is the number of directories to nest.
--trim=num
Determine how many directory levels to trim from the beginning
of the srcdir path when creating directories under dstdir. The
default value is 1. See THE TRIM OPTION for more details.
--delete
When in recursive mode, delete files and directories under dst‐
dir that do not exist under srcdir.
--delete-keys
When deleting files, also delete their symmetric key and file
name mapping (if applicable). When only --delete is used, the
symmetric key and file mapping are kept, so that if the file is
recreated, it will be rsyncable with the original file. This
option implies --delete.
-bnum --keybits=num
Specify the block cipher's key size. For AES, these can be 128,
192 or 256. Note that unless the --fr or --fkP options are also
specified, this will only affect files for which no keyfile
exists.
--noatime=num
(Only on some platforms, most notably Linux). The platform usu‐
ally keeps track of when files were last being accessed. Since
rsyncrypto is typically used for backup, it opens the files it
encrypts with the O_NOATIME option, which is a Linux specific
extension that tells the system not to update the file's access
time. When opening a file where the opening process is not owned
by the file owner, an attempt to open the file with O_NOATIME
will cause the open to fail with "permission denied".
num can be one of these options: 0 means do not use O_NOATIME at
all. 1 (the default) means attempt to only use O_NOATIME if
rsyncrypto thinks it will not cause a permission denied error.
2 means to use O_NOATIME always.
--no-archive-mode
Do not try to preserve timestamps. This option is incompatible
with -c.
--gzip=path
By default, rsyncrypto will compress the plain text prior to
encrypting it. In order not to become rsync unfriendly due to
the compression, rsyncrypto will search the path for an instance
of gzip(1) that supports the --rsyncable option. If the system's
default gzip does not support this option (all Debian and deriv‐
atives, as well as some others, support it), use this option to
tell rsyncrypto to use a different instance of gzip. The tests
directory of rsyncrypto's source has a file called "gzip", that
does NULL compression by redirecting the input and output to
cat(1).
--roll-win=num, --roll-min=num, --roll-sensitivity=num
Affects the rolling block algorithm. See NOTES.
--fk, --fr
If command line, or a version with different defaults, dictate
different values for the --roll-* options or the -b option,
these will only affect files for which keyfile does not yet
exist. specifying the --fk or --fr will recreate keyfile if it
has values different than those in the previous key file.
-v, --verbose
Increase verbosity level. Specify several times to be more ver‐
bose.
NOTES
encrypting stdin
If srcfile is given as `-', the plain text data will be read fro stdin.
This does not yet work for decompression (see BUGS).
--roll-win=num, --roll-min=num, --roll-sensitivity=num
These values affect some of the inner workings of rsyncrypto's decision
making. In particular, these affect how rsyncrypto decides when to
revert to the IV.
These options should not be played with unless you understand what you
are doing. They are not dangerous, in that they will never cause data
loss. Any value should still allow decryption of the file. They do have
an affect on rsync's efficiency.
These options are only there to allow quick response in case a security
problem pops up with their default values. If that happens, an advisory
may come out giving new values to fill in as a workaround. Until that
happens, most users are advised to leave these options alone.
THE TRIM OPTION
When running rsyncrypto in recursive mode, the directory structure
under srcdir is re-created under dstdir, with one directory stripped
from the path. In other words, if we have a directory structure which
has:
a/b/c/file
running rsyncrypto with srcdir of "a/b", and dstdir of "f" will create
"f/b/c/file".
The --trim options lets the user say how many parts to trim from srcdir
when creating directories under dstdir and keydir. If, in the above
example, we said --trim=0 then "f/a/b/c/file" would have been created.
Likewise, if we said --trim=2 then "f/c/file" would have been created.
It is an error to give a trim value which is higher than the number of
directory parts actually in srcdir. In the above example, --trim=3
would result in an error.
SECURITY
The roll values affect, to a not totally known degree, how much infor‐
mation is "leaked" between plain text and cipher text. The default val‐
ues are supposed to leak less than 20 bits of aggregated information
about the plain text file for every 8KB, in the worst case. These val‐
ues, we hope, will be considered secure enough for most usages. How‐
ever, if your country's fate is at stake, use a non-rsync optimized
encryption, such as the one provided by openssl(1).
EXAMPLES AND TUTORIAL
Before starting to use rsyncrypto you will need a public key in X509
certificate format. The quickest way to generate one of these is using
the openssl(1) package. To generate a new 1536 bit RSA key as
"backup.key", and store the corresponding unencrypted public key in
"backup.crt", use the following command:
openssl req -nodes -newkey rsa:1536 -x509-keyout backup.key
-out backup.crt
It does not matter what you answer for the certificate details, or when
you set it to expire. Rsyncrypto ignores everything in the certificate
but the actual key.
To encrypt file "data" into "data.enc", storing the file's specific key
at "data.key", run:
rsyncrypto data data.enc data.key backup.crt
Anywhere in these examples that "backup.crt" is used, "backup.key" can
be used as well. The above could also have "backup.key" as the last
argument. If these examples list "backup.key" specifically, then it
means that "backup.crt" cannot be used instead.
"data.enc" will be created. If "data.key" exists from a previous run,
then the newly created "data.enc" will have the same symmetric key and
other attributes, thus maintaining the rsync friendliness of the
encryption. It is therefor important to provide any previous key file
for the data if one is available.
The command line to decrypt the file depends on whether you have the
key file used when the file was encrypted. If you do, then decryption
can take place using only the public key, with the following command:
rsyncrypto-d data.enc data.dec data.key backup.crt
If the key file was lost, the private key must be used to recover it
from the encrypted file using the following command:
rsyncrypto-d data.enc data.dec data.key backup.key
"data.key" will be created by the above command, as well as "data.dec".
Use of rsyncrypto to encrypt whole directories is similar, with direc‐
tory names replacing file names in the above example. To encrypt the
content of a directory called "data" to a directory called "enc", stor‐
ing the symmetric keys in a directory called "keys", run the following
command:
rsyncrypto-r data enc keys backup.crt
As before the directories "enc" and "keys" will be created if they do
not already exist. The directory structure under "plain" will be dupli‐
cated under "enc" and under "keys". That is, if there is a file called
"foo" under "data", an encrypted files called "foo" will be created
under "enc", and a key file named "foo" will be created under "keys".
In other words, the first part of the path to "data/foo" (the part that
says "data") is eliminated from the path, and this determines the name
of the files under "enc" and "keys".
If a different trimming is required, the --trim option can be used. To
have rsyncrypto create "enc/data/foo" instead of the above, use the
following command:
rsyncrypto-r --trim=0 data enc keys backup.crt
Instead of taking all files from a single directory, it is possible to
supply rsyncrypto with a list of files and directories which to
encrypt. This is done using the --filelist option, like so:
rsyncrypto--filelist --trim=0 list enc keys backup.crt
"enc" and "keys" retain the same meaning as before. "list" is a text
file with a list, one per line, of files to encrypt. The --trim=0
option says that if list contains a line saying "/home/foo/bar" which
states the name of a file, then an encrypted file called
"enc/home/foo/bar" will be created. Without it, the file will be called
"enc/foo/bar". Likewise, with --trim=2, the file would be created as
"enc/bar".
It is often a problem that the file names are not encrypted. If that is
the case, we can ask rsyncrypto to encrypt the file names, as well as
the actual files. Rsyncrypto does not actually encrypt the file names.
Instead, it replaces the actual file name with a random series of char‐
acters. The mapping between the actual file name and the garbled name
is stored in a mapping file.
rsyncrypto --name-encrypt=map --trim=0 -r plain enc keys
backup.crt
This will encrypt the "plain" directory structure into enc, exactly as
before. Unlike before, all files will be directly under the "enc"
directory, and will be named as a meaningless garble. A file called
"map" will be created under the current directory that contains a map
between the gabled and the real name of the file. In addition, two
files, called "enc/filemap" and "keys/filemap", will also be created.
These are the encrypted and key file corresponding to the "map" file
mentioned above. During decryption, if "map" does not exist, it will be
created by decrypting "enc/filemap".
Important note: When performing file name encryption, it is vitally
important to give the correct --trim values, both during encryption and
during decryption. Failing to do so will cause rsyncrypto to search for
non-existing file names, and to fail to locate the files to decrypt.
BUGS
It is not yet possible to decrypt using password protected private key.
Decrypting from stdin is not yet supported.
SEE ALSOrsync(1), gzip(1), openssl(1), x509(1), req(1).
AUTHORrsyncrypto was written by Shachar Shemesh for Lingnu Open Source Con‐
sulting ltd. http://www.lingnu.com
This manual page was written by Shachar Shemesh <shachar@debian.org>
PROJECT HOMEPAGE
http://rsyncrypto.lingnu.com
Lingnu Open Source Consulting July 22, 2008 RSYNCRYPTO(1)
