Back That Gmail Up
blog.jerodsanto.net
blog.jerodsanto.net
I am baffled at how people continue using such a service for something as important as e-mail in 2012, while still being fully aware that their access can be completely cut off at random with no reason or recourse. Does everyone just assume "it won't happen to me"?
Gmail is very convenient, so I use it despite the very small risk that it will backfire on me.
It's free and works PERFECTLY 99.9%+ of the time, for 99.9%+ of users. The edge case (being shut off) can be easily worked around by having backups and changing your MX records to some other email provider ifwhen you find yourself without service from Google.
This risk is acceptable when weighed against "worst-case is 24 hours of no email while I switch providers", and even that probably won't happen. If it does happen to you, it's just a small temporary inconvenience with no lasting effect.
"Shit happens, always have regular tested backups (gmail or otherwise)" negates any potential data loss.
But good point, and I reckon that's another good reason for anyone using email for professional purposes to get their own domain and use it.
(One of my pet peeves is seeing businesses advertise a www.mycompany.co.uk website and a bob@aol.com address. Small places do it a lot - why would you buy a domain and not use it fully? Why?)
So, you're paying and giving up on a nice webmail client with two-factor auth (how many providers offer this?) for "finding out what happen". I don't think it's a great deal.
I'm not a Gmail apologist, by the way - I think there are valid reasons not to use it, like not giving Google a copy of your whole life - but I don't find their policy for when "shit happens" a real problem.
The point was, that exclusively relying on it is not smart, if email is important to you. You can easily use the full benefits of your gmail convenience while still having a fully working fallback. There are even two ways of doing it, one would be to simply forward your email, or using your own domain on google apps.
Hmm, from the first post I replied to (by 'there'):
I am baffled at how people continue using such a serviceI'd bet that Gmail has better uptime and less chance of loss than owning your own domain, for most cases.
People hate on Google Apps, but you don't give up control if you follow both these steps (which is easy.)
I also don't see any reason why another email provider won't do what people are afraid Google will do.
Really?
Do you know of any other (free) options out there with comparable options? I really only use the hosted email, but other features are always handy
That's why I decided to get my own domain and use google apps 4 domain. I mean, who knows what happens in 10 years, maybe twitter will became internet-giant and I'll use twitter apps 4 domain then.
I am consistently baffled that people with higher than average technical skills assume that everyone is at their level.
Many people worry about Gmail/Google cutting them off with no/ or little recourse. The mistake in your assumption that I'm pointing out as an example is that most people don't know how to run their own mail.
So, no: I don't think everyone is assuming it won't happen to them. They just don't know what to do, and that's no reason to cast Gmail users as afflicted with the 'psychological law of self exception' (or willfully ignorant).
The GP is talking about Google themselves blocking access. I'm not worried that Google will reset my passwords in other accounts.
To me, it's worth the tiny, tiny risk that I might get cut off.
I use this in my .zshrc to create Bitbucket repos on the fly:
function bitbucket() {
curl -X POST -u masnick:`security 2>&1 >/dev/null find-internet-password -gs masnick.bitbucket.org | cut -d '"' -f 2` https://api.bitbucket.org/1.0/repositories/ -d name=$@ -d scm=git -d is_private=True
};
For this reason, there is a --restart option for the sync and restore mode (sync being the backup). The restart mode is a resume mode that will restart the backup or restore near from where it failed.
With that mode you should be able to download your 6 GB on disk.
I'm no security expert but that raises a red flag for me. I'd rather have some way of entering my password each time I want to back up, but this would also make the cron process impossible.
cat ~/.gmail-pass | xargs python bagoma.py --email=foo@barCloudPull stores your password securely in the Mac OS X keychain.
Does it also do cloud push? In other words, can I use your app to restore the backups to a different Gmail account later?
1. I'd rather have one app do the whole thing, so that I know it's tested and it works.
2. How about labels, contact, calendars, etc?
I'd pay for this app, but only if it allowed full roundtrip.
The ability to restore directly to Google is on my roadmap for future versions.
1. It saves one big inscrutable .db file rather than individual messages in some compatible format or other.
2. It doesn't seem to play nice with laptop suspend. If I'm going to run it as a scheduled task then it needs to not get confused if I shut my laptop lid in the middle of a run.
3. It could be clearer about the correct workflow for continual incremental backups. It sounds like you probably want to do one full backup, continual partial backups and then occasionally a full backup in case your labels have changed. I don't like choices.
1. Gmvault doesn't save all your emails in a .db file. It creates a db directory which contains sub directories containing your emails in eml format. So it is using a standard email format and allow users to access individual emails.
2. I have already closed my laptop and reopen it and Gmvault restarted from where it stopped (tried on windows). Still there might be a problem so please report it following the instructions here: http://gmvault.org/report_pb.html.
3. Regarding the workflow, the recommended mode is to do a full backup and then daily do a quick backup. The quick backup is an incremental backup that only check emails for the last two months. It takes only 2 to 3 minutes normally.
Try 'imapsync' [1] instead, as it uses a config file for your credentials instead of command-line arguments, keeping the secret(s) out of the process list.
Also, the author of this blog post is showing his inexperience:
> BaGoMa's output is pretty informative so I send it to log a file in case I ever want to check up on it and make sure the backups are still working.
You won't ever do that (no reason to check the logs when it's working), and it will fail (effectively-silently) one day without you noticing, and then you won't have backups when you actually find that you need them. Don't do it that way.
Instead, use a cronjob wrapper script (e.g. [2]) that is silent on success and outputs on error, so the "cronjob-output-as-email" feature works to notify you when it breaks.
[1] http://imapsync.lamiral.info/
[2] https://github.com/sneak/misc/blob/master/cronify/cronify
Given where he said the box resides, I'd say he's got a major problem if unfriendlies are in s position to run ps -eF on it, no matter what is in the command strings, LOL!
And, if they can run ps, they can more than likely read the config files, too!
> Instead, use a cronjob wrapper script (e.g. [2]) that is silent on success and outputs on error, so the "cronjob-output-as-email" feature works to notify you when it breaks.
Excellent suggestion.
It is hosted on SF, and that IS weird and scary. In this day and age, why would your new cutting-edge FOSS offering be delivered on SF rather than github?
Specifically I like that it stores all your emails as plain text, one file per email, so you can easily use/write other tools to search/browse your backups if you need to. Maybe someone already has?
(Well, it stores the raw email contents as text. Most emails have a text/plain bit but not all, so you can almost just use grep.)
eg 00/00a87... 00/00aa8... 0b/0b0a9...
So you'd have to do some folder shuffling before dumping the data into a Maildir server filesystem but that's not to hard.
You'll never have to worry about getting kicked off or them going under then.
I've been running my own mail server for 15 years and I've probably spent a couple of hours administering it over that time.
Are my servers up? Don't really care - SMTP will be redelivered if I discover they are down. They were down for about 2 days once thanks to the idiots at BT digging through the cable. No major effect other than some peace.
Is it an open relay? no it's not - I checked it.
Anti spam? I deal with it manually. I don't get much as I don't publicise my email address.
Fair point on SMTP retries, but "up" also includes "not under attack, not already hacked, fully patched & secure".
> Is it an open relay? no it's not - I checked it.
Good for you, you clearly have the skills to do so and to be confident in it. Not everyone does or even knows what that means.
> Anti spam?
Actually, I wasn't talking about the receiving spam problem. You can deal with that on your own server in many ways.
I was talking about the email you sent being marked as spam problem, so your intended receiver never reads it. Maybe your reverse DNS records are wrong or missing, or SPF records, or one of a thousand little things. This is much harder to fix, as you have to do it on each mail host you send to, and worse, you may not even realise it's happening.
Again, not saying you or anyone shouldn't, just that there are downsides that need to be considered. I did it for years then realised my time was better spent elsewhere and moved to Google Apps.
How the world has changed...
Probably more convenient than periodically running a POP3 client.