Automating backups to an encrypted drive

[lanas]

On Saturday, 26 January 2008 08:56:14 -0800,
Richard England <rlengland at verizon.net> wrote :

> I'm not much help in this area but I think the OPs issue is having a 
> script with an embedded password.  If the script has to sudo or su to 
> the correct environment to mount the drive and/or perform the backup
> to a drive with the encryption scheme the password would be in plain
> text and therefore compromised.

That's basically it.  Where a password is needed, then a password must
be given in a script.  And a password in a script - any kind of script
- is in ASCII characters.

> Is there any way in which running this as a user cron job might be 
> useful?  Could cron start a job as a user with the proper access
> rights?

The task here is to mount an encrypted partition.  Running the script
as root (eg. part of a root cron job) will not help.

As for me, so far I do not think it's possible.  But I asked, just in
case someone would pop up with a solution to this, perhaps suggestion
another method to encrypt the drive that works with some kind of ACL
credentials or shared key, or whatever.

Cheers,

Al