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My Mac app, CloudPull, does something similar. CloudPull backs up Google Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Drive (formery Docs) and Reader to your Mac. http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/ CloudPull 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?
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"?
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
My main problem with this is that it would require me to store my password, in clear text, in a shell script. 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.
Just chmod the shell script to 700, so that only your account can read it, together with an encrypted HDD that should be quite save.
cat ~/.gmail-pass | xargs python bagoma.py --email=foo@barI'm not leery of Google shuttering its Gmail service, but I can imagine a scenario where they cut off my access to Gmail and I have no way to plead my case to the search behemoth. 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…
My Mac app, CloudPull, does something similar. CloudPull backs up Google Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Drive (formery Docs) and Reader to your Mac. http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/ CloudPull stores your password securely in the Mac OS X keychain.
I looked through your web site and one question remained unanswered: Does it also do cloud push? In other words, can I use your app to restore the backups to a different Gmail account later?
I'm not leery of Google shuttering its Gmail service, but I can imagine a scenario where they cut off my access to Gmail and I have no way to plead my case to the search behemoth. 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'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.
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.
This may be a naive question, but why is it not enough to set your mail client to save a copy of all messages?
I'm not leery of Google shuttering its Gmail service, but I can imagine a scenario where they cut off my access to Gmail and I have no way to plead my case to the search behemoth. 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…