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olivertreend
October 30th, 2009, 06:45 PM
Hi

I have been looking all over these forums and over the internet to find out how to do this. And so far, I've only found dead ends. I know this is possible to do - and I'm sure a lot of people do it - but for some reason I can't find anywhere that easily documents how to do it.

I have a 1TB external hard drive. I'd like to connect it to my Ubuntu Server box and use BackupPC (http://backuppc.sourceforge.net) to take backups of several desktops on the network.

I'd like this external drive to be encrypted, but still be accessed like a normal drive - I think this is possible through LVM e.g. /dev/mapper/crypt/mydrive although I'm not sure how to do it. None of the partitions or drives in the rest of the Ubuntu Server setup are encrypted - it's only this one drive.

http://jeltsch.org/node/457
This article seemed pretty informative, but I found it rather confusing and didn't understand what exactly was going on.

How would I go around encrypting my external drive's partition?

I would be extremely grateful if someone could post instructions or a mini howto walking me through how to set this up. Or maybe you could point me in the right direction with a link to another forum post?

Cheers :D

Oliver
bodhi.zazen
October 30th, 2009, 07:17 PM
http://www.howtoforge.com/automatically-unlock-luks-encrypted-drives-with-a-keyfile
OpenSourceFuture
October 30th, 2009, 07:19 PM
This could also be easily accomplished with truecrypt.
XCan
October 30th, 2009, 08:20 PM
I vote for truecrypt as well. For me, it was the easiest to get running, and it's multiplatform (provided you use a "multiplatform" filesystem of course).
olivertreend
October 31st, 2009, 09:18 AM
How would I go about encrypting the partition with Truecrypt?
I've used Truecrypt under Windows a fair amount, but not from the command line.

At the moment, I have Truecrypt installed on my Ubuntu Server box. I also have the 1TB volume plugged in and mounted.

Where can I go from here?

I've tried looking around for tutorials, but I'm finding it hard to get my head around. I'd really appreciate some simple and easy to follow instructions or tips.

Cheers again :D
bodhi.zazen
October 31st, 2009, 12:09 PM
How would I go about encrypting the partition with Truecrypt?
I've used Truecrypt under Windows a fair amount, but not from the command line.

At the moment, I have Truecrypt installed on my Ubuntu Server box. I also have the 1TB volume plugged in and mounted.

Where can I go from here?

I've tried looking around for tutorials, but I'm finding it hard to get my head around. I'd really appreciate some simple and easy to follow instructions or tips.

Cheers again :D

Everything you would want to know (and more) is documented on the TrueCrypt home page:

http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/
XCan
October 31st, 2009, 03:55 PM
How would I go about encrypting the partition with Truecrypt?
I've used Truecrypt under Windows a fair amount, but not from the command line.

At the moment, I have Truecrypt installed on my Ubuntu Server box. I also have the 1TB volume plugged in and mounted.

Where can I go from here?

I've tried looking around for tutorials, but I'm finding it hard to get my head around. I'd really appreciate some simple and easy to follow instructions or tips.

Cheers again :D

It should work more or less the same as in Windows. Sure you can run it from the command line but there is a GUI included that is more or less identical to the Windows versions'. Have you looked in your menu Applications -> Others? After I installed Truecrypt it resides there.
tubbygweilo
October 31st, 2009, 06:15 PM
Oliver,
if using 9.10 the Trucrypt application can now be found in Application>Accessories.
It has moved places from 9.04 to 9.10.
olivertreend
October 31st, 2009, 06:29 PM
It should work more or less the same as in Windows. Sure you can run it from the command line but there is a GUI included that is more or less identical to the Windows versions'. Have you looked in your menu Applications -> Others? After I installed Truecrypt it resides there.

Wow! I didn't even realise that TrueCrypt came with a GUI on Linux! That'll come in handy next time!
This time round, I've decided to encrypt it under Windows since the encryption is cross platform.

I've found a pretty good tutorial for using TrueCrypt command line under Linux here: http://www.howtoforge.com/truecrypt_data_encryption
It seems pretty informative and easy to follow.
HermanAB
November 1st, 2009, 12:31 AM
Here you go:
http://aeronetworks.ca/luks-usb-howto.html