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howto:truecrypt

Truecrypt

What is Truecrypt?

Truecrypt is a multiplatform file system encryption software, that is exceptionally easy to setup and use.

Why would I want to use Truecrypt?

Truecrypt will allow you to store confidential or private files either on your EEEPC or on a memory or USB stick. These can then only accessed when you enter the appropriate passphrase.

How do I install Truecrypt?

1. Connect to the Internet

2. Open a terminal (using Ctrl+Alt+T)

3. Install the Fuse Libraries and Tools

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libfuse2 fuse-utils

23/6/08 - “E: Couldn't find package libfuse2”, so nothing which follows works.

4. Download and Install the Truecrypt Binary

wget http://ftp.linux.hr/asuseee/xandros/binary/truecrypt_5.0-1_i386.deb
dpkg -i truecrypt_5.0-1_i386.deb
rm truecrypt_5.0-1_i386.deb

4/4/08 - this does not work for me (base install + advanced mode enabled) - truecrypt ⇒ segmentation fault

Unmounting your user partition before shutdown or suspend

IMPORTANT: by default xandros does not appear to handle umount'ing the loop0 truecrypt volume very smoothly. At least, I can confirm this is the case when volumes disk file is sitting on an external SD card. This can result in corruption to files on the volume at shutdown or suspend.

See Proper unmount of external drives

Usage

Either run Truecrypt from the command line using the command truecrypt, or create an icon to it using one of the menu editors.

Encrypting your user partition

You can encrypt your entire user partition, if you're comfortable making some changes to the startup scripts. This means all files you create or modify will be encrypted, including your home directory, and also your system configuration, e.g. wifi networking passwords. In this configuration, your EeePC will ask for a decryption password on boot-up.

You should probably use TrueCrypt 5.1 for this, rather than version 5 as above, as certain command line options don't work in version 5 - in particular, it's not possible to create volumes from the command line in earlier versions.

See http://www.glost.eclipse.co.uk/gfoot/eee/truecrypt/ for more details, including a binary of TrueCrypt 5.1 compiled for the EeePC. (That web page should be transfered to the wiki sometime.)

Errors

Unable to mount read/write

If a file is corrupted on the truecrypt volume it will appear to mount as read/write (rw) but once you access the corrputed file it will change the disk to read-only (ro). You can see the state by running 'mount'. To fix you need to run a file system check (fsck or dosfsck) which can be done from the truecrypt GUI.

References

howto/truecrypt.txt · Last modified: 2012/01/27 19:26 by hello