encfs - encrypted virtual filesystem

This package provides a user level encrypted filesystem. There are lots of guides and information on how to set this up, so I’ll just give a quick overview for use in debian.

• First install the encfs package.
• Next load the fuse kernel module. If your running a stock debian kernel it should be available. Also add the fuse model to the /etc/modules file if you want it to load on startup.
• Add your user to the fuse group, adduser username fuse This will provide the user access to mount/umount the user level filesystem used by encfs. You will probably need to logout and back in for this change to take effect.
• Encfs works by having a directory where it stores the encrypted files and a mount point where you can access the files. encfs can create these directory for you when you first setup the encrypted filesystem. To start run encfs ~/.crypt ~/crypt This will prompt you to create the two directories and then ask you to choose your encryption method. For the default standard mode simply hit enter.
• You will now need to supply your password to access the encrypted files. This should be secure and also make sure you never forget or loose it as there will be no way to access your encrypted files without it.
• After supplying your password you will now have access to the encrypted filesystem in ~/crypt As you copy files there they will be encrypted on the fly and stored in ~/.crypt If you look in that directory you will only see the encrypted files and will be unable to make out the contents of the files, or the filenames. You will however be able to see the directory structure as well as file sizes. If this is a problem you should use a different type of encrypted filesystem.

Now that you have your encrypted filesystem setup you can mount and umount it as need be by using the command: fusermount -u ~/crypt to umount the filesystem and encfs ~/.crypt ~/crypt to mount the filesystem. Another useful thing about encfs is that you can backup the ~/.crypt directory without having to have it mounted for backups and you can easily restore it to another machine and mount it as long as you have your password.

For more information:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_EncFS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EncFS
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/204

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.