Backing up an Android phone to an OpenBSD laptop
Hello. I'm just looking for advice, not a howto. I realize this is not an OpenBSD specific topic, but since I'm trying to get Linux and OpenBSD to cooperate, anyone I ask for advice will refer me elsewhere. I want to do backups of my Android phone whenever it is at home. The best software package I know of for this is rsync. I own an ARM development system (a Trim Slice), running Linux, and can therefore compile anything I want for the Android phone (statically linked). I have a couple options, that I can think of: Run rsync's daemon on the phone, from a boot script. Configure hotplugd on OpenBSD to run an rsync client when the phone connects via USB. I like this idea because it reduces needed privileges on my laptop... I trust the phone less than my laptop, so I would rather give my laptop access to the phone than my phone access to my laptop. I dislike this idea because the phone uses 5 watts while charging, and I would prefer to charge it from a household outlet to reduce load on the laptop. The second option is to run rsync's deamon on my laptop, and rsync from the phone via an ifup script that checks the SSID. This works nice because I can charge the phone from an outlet, and do the rsync wirelessly. This is harder to secure though, because I would want the rsync client to have no other access to my laptop. Am I missing other considerations? Which of these two options is better?
Re: Backing up an Android phone to an OpenBSD laptop
On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 23:25, Robert Connolly wrote: The second option is to run rsync's deamon on my laptop, and rsync from the phone via an ifup script that checks the SSID. This works nice because I can charge the phone from an outlet, and do the rsync wirelessly. This is harder to secure though, because I would want the rsync client to have no other access to my laptop. There's no reason why the phone has to log in to your laptop as the same user that you do. If you are afraid that somebody will exploit your phone, then exploit rsync, then exploit the openbsd kernel in order to get access to your files, in that case I'd advise taking a deep breath. :)
Re: Backing up an Android phone to an OpenBSD laptop
On 09/25/2012 11:25 PM, Robert Connolly wrote: Hello. I'm just looking for advice, not a howto. I realize this is not an OpenBSD specific topic, but since I'm trying to get Linux and OpenBSD to cooperate, anyone I ask for advice will refer me elsewhere. I want to do backups of my Android phone whenever it is at home. The best software package I know of for this is rsync. I own an ARM development system (a Trim Slice), running Linux, and can therefore compile anything I want for the Android phone (statically linked). I have a couple options, that I can think of: Run rsync's daemon on the phone, from a boot script. Configure hotplugd on OpenBSD to run an rsync client when the phone connects via USB. I like this idea because it reduces needed privileges on my laptop... I trust the phone less than my laptop, so I would rather give my laptop access to the phone than my phone access to my laptop. I dislike this idea because the phone uses 5 watts while charging, and I would prefer to charge it from a household outlet to reduce load on the laptop. The second option is to run rsync's deamon on my laptop, and rsync from the phone via an ifup script that checks the SSID. This works nice because I can charge the phone from an outlet, and do the rsync wirelessly. This is harder to secure though, because I would want the rsync client to have no other access to my laptop. Am I missing other considerations? Which of these two options is better? There is an rsync client app in available for download. I have used it to sync to OBSD for over a year without a problem.