Howto install duplicity rpm under RedHat / CentOS / Fedora Core Linux

Q. I would like to use duplicity package to automatically encrypting and storing remote backups in a bandwidth efficient manner in our backup server. The server is already configured and I’d like to install the same under RedHat Enterprise Linux. How do I install duplicity w/o compiling from source code?

A. Duplicity is a piece of software which provides easy encrypted versioned remote backup of files requiring little of the remote server. It does this using GnuPG, tar, and rdiff. To transmit data it can use ssh/scp, local file access, rsync, ftp, and Amazon S3.

The best way to install it to use rpm files from DAG's repo. For example RHEL 4 64 bit version can be installed using RPM command:
# wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/duplicity/duplicity-0.4.2-1.el4.rf.x86_64.rpm # rpm -ivh duplicity-0.4.2-1.el4.rf.x86_64.rpm

In order to use duplicity you need to create a GPG key:
# gpg --gen-key
Next run duplicity as follows to make backups:
# duplicity --encrypt-key="YOUR-KEY" /home scp://user@backup.server.com/directory
You can verify backups with --verify option:
# duplicity --encrypt-key="YOUR-KEY" --verify scp://user@backup.server.com/directory /home

Finally, if you need to restore file use command as follows:
# mkdir -p /disk3/resored.file # duplicity --encrypt-key="YOUR-KEY" scp://user@backup.server.com/directory /disk3/resored.file

Read the man page of duplicity and gpg for more information and command options.