Based on kernel version 2.6.26. Page generated on 2008-07-16 21:12 EST.
1 eCryptfs: A stacked cryptographic filesystem for Linux 2 3 eCryptfs is free software. Please see the file COPYING for details. 4 For documentation, please see the files in the doc/ subdirectory. For 5 building and installation instructions please see the INSTALL file. 6 7 Maintainer: Phillip Hellewell 8 Lead developer: Michael A. Halcrow <mhalcrow[AT]us.ibm[DOT]com> 9 Developers: Michael C. Thompson 10 Kent Yoder 11 Web Site: http://ecryptfs.sf.net 12 13 This software is currently undergoing development. Make sure to 14 maintain a backup copy of any data you write into eCryptfs. 15 16 eCryptfs requires the userspace tools downloadable from the 17 SourceForge site: 18 19 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ecryptfs/ 20 21 Userspace requirements include: 22 - David Howells' userspace keyring headers and libraries (version 23 1.0 or higher), obtainable from 24 http://people.redhat.com/~dhowells/keyutils/ 25 - Libgcrypt 26 27 28 NOTES 29 30 In the beta/experimental releases of eCryptfs, when you upgrade 31 eCryptfs, you should copy the files to an unencrypted location and 32 then copy the files back into the new eCryptfs mount to migrate the 33 files. 34 35 36 MOUNT-WIDE PASSPHRASE 37 38 Create a new directory into which eCryptfs will write its encrypted 39 files (i.e., /root/crypt). Then, create the mount point directory 40 (i.e., /mnt/crypt). Now it's time to mount eCryptfs: 41 42 mount -t ecryptfs /root/crypt /mnt/crypt 43 44 You should be prompted for a passphrase and a salt (the salt may be 45 blank). 46 47 Try writing a new file: 48 49 echo "Hello, World" > /mnt/crypt/hello.txt 50 51 The operation will complete. Notice that there is a new file in 52 /root/crypt that is at least 12288 bytes in size (depending on your 53 host page size). This is the encrypted underlying file for what you 54 just wrote. To test reading, from start to finish, you need to clear 55 the user session keyring: 56 57 keyctl clear @u 58 59 Then umount /mnt/crypt and mount again per the instructions given 60 above. 61 62 cat /mnt/crypt/hello.txt 63 64 65 NOTES 66 67 eCryptfs version 0.1 should only be mounted on (1) empty directories 68 or (2) directories containing files only created by eCryptfs. If you 69 mount a directory that has pre-existing files not created by eCryptfs, 70 then behavior is undefined. Do not run eCryptfs in higher verbosity 71 levels unless you are doing so for the sole purpose of debugging or 72 development, since secret values will be written out to the system log 73 in that case. 74 75 76 Mike Halcrow 77 mhalcrow[AT]us.ibm[DOT]com