Encrypting/Password protecting Folders

[bodhi.zazen]

Compatibility moving forward looks good, IMO.

Yes there are issues for users upgrading. The advice is to delete and re-create the crypt.

[kevdog]

anymore technical sites that give info on how the encryption is performed? aes, blowfish, serpent, etc? dual algorithms?

[bodhi.zazen]

You have several options, yo will see them when you set up an encrypted directory , example :

http://www.devx.com/opensource/Article/39337/0/page/2

[kevdog]

I was hoping for double encryption options similar to Truecrypt. I only saw aes, and des variants. Either way with the Jaunty install I will try this feature out. Thanks for the information and the link. I like the feature of protecting the folder via a USB password.

[The Cog]

Ecryptfs loos interesting, but it's not quite what I was after. I wanted a directory that I could unlock and relock at will, not to automatically happen wherever I log in, and not my whole home. I find that encfs does just what I want.

I added these two scripts to /usr/local/bin:
/usr/local/bin/crypton:

#!/bin/sh
encfs ~/.crypt ~/crypt

/usr/local/bin/cryptoff:

#!/bin/sh
fusermount -u ~/crypt

The encrypted files are held in ~/.crypt. The command crypton makes the unencrypted content visible in ~/crypt and cryptoff makes crypt appear empty again.

First time you use crypton, the directories are created and you are promoted to give the passphrase that will be needed later whenever you unlock the crypt. Even when unlocked, only the logged on user can see the crypt contents (root gets access denied).

This is an ideal solution for me, as I keep just a few documents that I only want to access occasionally.

[bodhi.zazen]

Ecryptfs will do the same thing. You are confusing the "private home" (which is not the greatest of names) with encrypting a single directory.

See the section under an encrypted directory on this page : http://bodhizazen.net/Tutorials/Ecryptfs/

[The Cog]

Thanks for the correction. I should read more carefully. However, I don't like having to use sudo in order to mount the encrypted partition. It means that normal users have no option but to allow th auto-mount at login to do it for them.

Still, both solutions have their niches.

[bodhi.zazen]

Simply add your users with visudo (you do not need to give full root access).

But yes, it is nice to have options with encryption.