I have an external hard drive that contains several folders. The largest of these folders is a backup that I often update by rsyncing the relevant folders from an encrypted (via Ubuntu's implementation of ecryptfs) internal drive and the remainder are folders that I don't have copies of anywhere else and likely do not have enough storage space to place elsewhere. What I want to do is encrypt my external drive whilst still being able to update its contents via rsync, however I seem to have ran in to the following problems:   For the reasons already discussed, any method of encryption that would require me to wipe the external drive is highly undesirable. I would be willing to buy another drive, but that would cause issues mentioned in point #3. A method based on a system like ecryptfs would be undesirable because, to the best of my knowledge, the backup would be made inaccessible if the internal drive's user account becomes unusable (e.g. if the internal drive dies, which is half of the reason why I'd want to have the backup in the first place!). Even if I could get one of these methods to work, I do not believe that they would be compatible with rsync. I often don't have the opportunity to leave my machine turned on for long enough to copy my files from the internal drive to the external drive without the help of rsync. So unless I can get rsync to work with the encryption method, I would almost rather have an unencrypted drive that I could rsync.
124030
I want to save a backup of my data on a remote server, but never want the backup server to see the data unencrypted. Editing a single file and backing up should not result in everything being encrypted and sent again. The remote server should preferably not even know the directory structure (and especially not the directory names).  Is there such a solution?
117722
I love encfs as it provides file-based encrypting which is quite useful when it comes to cloud storage. But it looks like that especially for this use case, . I'm aware that  but how to deal with it in the meantime? Are there any alternatives that integrate well in ubuntu?  Edit: The security issue I mostly refer to is . It is still present in version 1.8 and makes your files vulnerable if someone get's multiple versions of your encrypted files. If one is worried about services like Dropbox are not that thrustworthy and encrypts folders uploaded into the cloud because of that, the opportunity that the attacker (the service) gets more than one copy of the cyphertext is absolutely given.
28568
I have 3 servers.  Call them A, B, and C.  B and C are remote and only have A in their hosts.allow.  What I need to do is log into A, and then rsync over SSH the files from B to C.  I want to use rsync because many of the files are similarly present on both B and C.  I could try to rsync from B -> A and then from A -> C except I don't have nearly enough disk space on A, so I'd have to find some way of "chunking" the files and I don't see an obvious way of grouping them, and even if I did, I'd have to babysit it too much, with deleting files off A's disk, restarting the process with the next chunk etc.  So is it somehow possible for me to rsync between the two servers?  I don't think I will be able to get anyone to change the hosts.allow for me :(
17535
I wonder what is the best practice for storing the virtual machine encrypted. I tried putting the image it a TrueCrypt volume, but it doesn't work nicely:   With the volume unmounted the VirtualBox complaints about missing VM disk, which is a bit annoying after a while. There's no way to quickly unmount the volume without shutting down the VM first (except for a dirty unmount, which is no good idea).   Maybe there's a better way or maybe a VM integrating encryption?
21928
I am an infrequent Ubuntu / Linux user, only use it in case of major disaster (in this case Ransom-ware nuclear, but that's another story).  So i booted up another laptop using Ubuntu from a USB-drive; inserted my external ntfs drive, and it gets recognized automatically, but if i try to create a new folder / drive anywhere, the "file manager" interface just closes down, and i have to launch it again (try again, rinse and repeat).  This leads me to guess my ext.drive was mounted in read-only mode by default.  Q1. How / where can i verify it is mounted in read-only mode?  Q2. What's the best way to make it mount in read-write mode?
122645
I need to create a file-based TrueCrypt volume in a 32GB USB pendrive. If I wanted to access my files in offline computers, I'd need to include the TrueCrypt executable in the pendrive as well. I'd like to create a multiplatform disk with all the files required to access my encrypted file-based drive from Windows, Linux, and MAC.  TrueCrypt already has an option for this: Options > Traveler Disk Setup (see ). It copies the executable portable app in the (unencrypted) drive, and has an option for including autorun.info files to automate mounting. In linux and MAC versions of TrueCrypt this option is not available I think, but the app can be run in "portable mode". If this worked (never tried), I'd have to include 3 executables in my USB drive: the Windows portable version, the Linux portable version and the MAC portable version.  So my questions:   Will the portable versions work as intended? The Win TrueCrypt executable certainly does, but what about the MAC and Linux versions? Will I need additional configuration in the host OS, permissions or drivers? I've heard that MAC doesn't support writing to NTFS (lmao). Otherwise this is the best filesystem for the pendrive since it is supported in both Windows and Linux. I could use the old FAT32 but it has a limit of 4 GB per file. My TrueCrypt volume needs to be way larger. So to make the drive RW-able in MAC, I've thought in including the NTFS-3G files in the USB, so that I could install them in a MAC machine should the need arise. Is this a good idea? Will I need admin permissions or make extensive configuration changes? (the MAC machine will not be mine, probably a hotel's or an internet cafe one). If #2 is not a good idea, I could partition the drive and include a Linux bootable distro only to cover the MAC case, and use the NTFS partition normally under Win and Linux. But Windows wont then recognise the second partition in a removable drive. I've read this can be overcomed by removing a "removable media bit" and converting the USB drive in a fixed drive. Is this bit stored or flashed in the USB drive, or is it part of the Windows OS configuration? Will all the partitions be recognised without problems in Linux and MAC? And most importantly, can a MAC run a linux live distro? Regarding #3, I've read about a Lexar tool (BootIt) that flips the bit, will this work with a Kingston pendrive?    Thanks in advance.
60369
I am using a cloned hard drive in attempts to restore some old files.   The cloned drive has 2 users, one with an encrypted home drive, one without. Both are administrators. When I couldn't get into the main user (with the encrypted home directory), I logged in as the 2nd user and changed the password.   It seems that I somehow broke the relationship between the encryption passphrase and the user. I'm pretty sure I have the passphrase. Is there a way to get to the data?
65972
Out of the box, Windows will not allow you to partition a USB Thumb / Flash Drive. How can you do this?  In case anyone is wondering Why you would do this?  It's interesting in the case of a  drive where you can take a large thumbdrive (like 4 or 8 GB) and format a small amount of the drive to be used normally as a Fat32 drive and leave the remaining partition encrypted using BitLocker. This allows you to keep some non secret data on the unencrypted partition(like portable apps).
116370
EDIT: I have since found that by using a folder in the root directory, things get a bit further - I can list the subfiles.  So it really looks like permissions on the folder are the issue.  I'm not sure what else to do besides chmod 777.  I'm trying to configure an anonymous rsync daemon on CentOS 5.9.  If I allow chroot the server reports that chroot fails.  If I disable it, chdir fails.  # rsyncd.conf  max connections = 20 log file = /var/log/rsync.log timeout = 300 use chroot = false  [builds]     path = /home/fuzz/builds     read only = yes     list = yes     uid = nobody     gid = nobody   .  # /etc/xinetd.d/rsync  # default: off # description: The rsync server is a good addition to an ftp server, as it \ #       allows crc checksumming etc. service rsync {         disable = no         socket_type     = stream         wait            = no         user            = root         server          = /usr/bin/rsync         server_args     = --daemon         log_on_failure  += USERID }   I have set all files and folders under /home/fuzz/builds to 777.  The folder is owned by the user fuzz.  On the client side, this works...  $ rsync rsync://host builds   But when I try to view the contents of the builds directory, I get this error...  $ rsync -vvvv rsync://host/builds opening tcp connection to host port 873 Connected to host (10.186.5.90) note: iconv_open("UTF-8", "UTF-8") succeeded. sending daemon args: --server --sender -vvvvde.Lsf . builds/ @ERROR: chdir failed [Receiver] _exit_cleanup(code=5, file=main.c, line=1534): entered rsync error: error starting client-server protocol (code 5) at main.c(1534) [Receiver=3.0.9] [Receiver] _exit_cleanup(code=5, file=main.c, line=1534): about to call exit(5)
33261
Let me give you some backup story first: A computer technician challenged me to give him my laptop and ask him for any piece of information that I wanted to "hide" in my hard drive. He claimed that he would be able to retrieve anything, no matter what I do to hide it.  Since I do not appreciate absolute statements like: "and there is nothing you can do about it", I started thinking about this in my head. I realized that a very secure Operating System would not cut it, since he does not need to boot from this specific hard drive in order to find things in my hard drive.  The generic question here is:  Is there a way to completely secure all data in a hard disk? (I do not need detailed explanation on how to do it, I just need you to point me to a direction; I can read more about it myself)  Specifically, I suspect that I may need:   An Operating System that is very secure and possibly encrypts all the data that it stores (no idea if such thing even exists). If the above does not exist, is there a way to manually encrypt the data in my hard drive and still be able to boot from that hard drive?   In general, I want to make the hard drive as least accessible as possible to anyone that is not me (= knows a specific password/key), so any solutions are welcome.
32671
I have a 1TB external (USB) HDD which i used for additional data storage (mostly media files).  Unfortunately, i appear to have changed the permissions on one of the sub-folders, and this is my problem.  The PC which i used the drive on most of the time, has died. Now, putting this external drive into a new PC, i cannot access the said sub-directory (Music) as i do not have permission.  Is it at all possible to resore the permissions of this directory to the default (ie FULL access to EVERYONE with no specifically defined "owner"?  I think the problem now is that the Owner of the folder is my user account from my (now dead) previous PC.  I dont know if this helps but the permissions were adjusted (originally) on a Windows 8 PC, where i was logged in using my Micrsoft Account. Even when plugging in the drive to another Windows 8 PC (this time Surface Pro), and logging in using the same Microsoft Account, i still cannot access the files in the music folder.  Is this possible?
14632
Let's say that I have a folder, within my Documents folder, that has files I want no one to access without a password.  Is there a way to lock down that folder so that it's password protected / encrypted?  In fact, is it possible to password-protect any individual folder?
74732
I want to backup my home directory to an external drive nightly using a cron job to execute rsync.  I am unsure of the exact behavior of rsync's symbolic link flags.   rsync's -a flag includes the -l flag (i.e. "copy symlinks as symlinks").  Does this just mean it will copy the link or that it will follow the link and copy everything in the link-to directory?  I want to avoid that because I have links to directories full of media files that would involve copying hundreds of gigabytes I don't need to back up. Fearing (but not certain) that rsync -a would copy all those media files I instead added the --no-links flag.  This does not seem to be behavior I want.  It just ignores copying any link which is problematic because I do have links I want copied (e.g. links to common header files from different project directories). Assuming #1 above (without the --no-links flag) is what I really want and it just copies the link without copying the linked-to files, will the links break when they are backed up?  For example I may rsync source directory /home/me/projects/misc to /media/extdrive/backup/home/me/projects/misc.  In this case I assume rsync is not smart enough nor does it try to correct the contents of symlinks for the relative directory changes.  Is this correct?  This is okay, it doesn't matter if the links are broken in the backup directories so long as they would be fixed and working if such time comes when they need to be restored.
107419
I want to make a fresh new copy of a large number of files from one local drive to another.  I've read that rsync does a checksum comparison of files when sending them to a remote machine over a network.   Will rsync make the comparison when copying the files between two local drives? If it does do a verification - is it a safe bet? Or is it better to do a byte by byte comparison?
86034
I want to have an encrypted directory (not homedir!) let's say /testdata.  I have used the following command and parameters to encrypt it:  root@pc:~# mount -t ecryptfs /testdata/ /testdata/ Passphrase:  Select cipher:   1) aes: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32  2) blowfish: blocksize = 8; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 56  3) des3_ede: blocksize = 8; min keysize = 24; max keysize = 24  4) twofish: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32  5) cast6: blocksize = 16; min keysize = 16; max keysize = 32  6) cast5: blocksize = 8; min keysize = 5; max keysize = 16 Selection [aes]:  Select key bytes:   1) 16  2) 32  3) 24 Selection [16]:  Enable plaintext passthrough (y/n) [n]:  Enable filename encryption (y/n) [n]: y Filename Encryption Key (FNEK) Signature [b9fc92f854a4c85b]:  Attempting to mount with the following options:   ecryptfs_unlink_sigs   ecryptfs_fnek_sig=b9fc92f854a4c85b   ecryptfs_key_bytes=16   ecryptfs_cipher=aes   ecryptfs_sig=b9fc92f854a4c85b WARNING: Based on the contents of [/root/.ecryptfs/sig-cache.txt], it looks like you have never mounted with this key  before. This could mean that you have typed your  passphrase wrong.  Would you like to proceed with the mount (yes/no)? : yes Would you like to append sig [b9fc92f854a4c85b] to [/root/.ecryptfs/sig-cache.txt]  in order to avoid this warning in the future (yes/no)? : yes Successfully appended new sig to user sig cache file Mounted eCryptfs   This command creates this file:  root@pc:~# cat .ecryptfs/sig-cache.txt  b9fc92f854a4c85b   Now I want to change the passphrase I used before. I found the ecryptfs-rewrap-passphrase command but I am not sure if I am on the right path:  root@pc:~# ecryptfs-rewrap-passphrase .ecryptfs/sig-cache.txt  Old wrapping passphrase:  New wrapping passphrase:  New wrapping passphrase (again):  Error: Unwrapping passphrase failed [-5] Info: Check the system log for more information from libecryptfs   /var/log/syslog says:  Jul 13 13:16:19 pc ecryptfs-rewrap-passphrase: ecryptfs_unwrap_passphrase: PK11_CipherOp() error; SECFailure = [-1]; PORT_GetError() = [-8188]   I have a newbie status in regards to ecryptfs and I would appreciate some enlightenment here.
47774
I want to use ext4 on my external HDD, but it must be cross-platform. (At least Linux, Win7 &amp; WinXP).  Unfortunately, I haven't found any proper driver allowing Windows to WRITE to ext4. I've found , but it only reads ext4.     9. ext4 extent read-only, no  size truncating and expanding support   More:     Supported Ext3/4 features:         flexible inode size: > 128 bytes, up to block size   dir_index:    htree directory index   filetype:     extra file mode in dentry   large_file:   > 4G files supported   sparse_super: super block backup in group descriptor   uninit_bg:    fast fsck and group checksum   extent:       reading, writing with no extending.   journal:      only support replay for internal journal         Unsupported Ext3/4 features:         journal: log-based operations, external journal   extent: size truncating &amp; expanding, file deletion   flex_bg: first metadata group   EA (extended attributes), ACL support      Also, I have found a patch for Ext4Fsd v0.50 ():     New: Matt Wu has made a new release 0.50 at   ext2fsd.com.  Support for ext4 extents and fix   for BSOD on Windows 7.   I don't think it will be safe. Also I've read some words about writing ext4 in Windows could cause data loss on the disk...  What is the External HDD used for? - First, it will store backups, then family movies, pictures. Some music, and etc. It will be connected to a Raspberry Pi, if I finally receive it. It won't really move, just when it is used to migrate computer's data to a new one. The largest files it will store are Clonezilla disk images (I don't know, if they will be large files or not).  Can someone provide a solution for this problem? Or is there NO important enough difference between ext4 and ext3, and I should use ext3? - (If yes, then can I use Ext2Fsd for that ext3 mount?)  Thank you!
95297
An encrypted /home directory gets mounted automatically for me when I log in. I have a second internal hard drive that I've formatted and encrypted with Disk Utility. I want it to be automatically mounted when I login, just like my encrypted /home directory is. How do I do this?  There are several very similar questions here, but the answers don't apply to my situation. It might be best to close/merge my question here and edit the second one below, but I think it may have been abandoned (and therefore never to be marked as accepted).   isn't a secure method, it circumvents the encryption.  requires editing fstab, which necessitates entering an additional password at boot. It's not automatic like mounting /home.  is very similar, but does not apply to an encrypted drive. The solution won't work for my needs.  but it's for NTFS drives, mine is ext4.    I can re-format and re-encrypt the second drive if a solution requires this. I've got all the data backed up elsewhere.