Dropbox encryption

I am starting to get used to having dropbox about and while I still am a bit nervous about running their binary I am going to trust them for now.

I do have some files that I am not overly happy about having available all the time so I have decided to encrypt them.

Using the new privte encrypted area support in intrepid I am able to have files shared but still encrypted.

Install ecryptfs-utils and then run ecryptfs-setup-private and follow the instruchtions. Then log out and log back in again as told.

You should now have a Private folder copy a file to it and then check that it an encrypted version is showing up in the .Private folder. The .Private folder is where all the encrypted data is stored and so this is what we are going to share on dropbox.

Unmount the Private folder then mv .Private to Dropbox and create a link.

cd sudo umount Private mv .Private Dropbox/ ln -s Dropbox/.Private ./

Then log out and back in again or run /sbin/mount.ecryptfs_private and you have it all sorted.

Note: I have yet to try getting this setup on antother box but I am sure it should be dooable. There are some files in .ecryptfs that will need to be copied to the other box. Then I may need to change the password that lock it but that is a test for tomorrow!

Note2: Okay this is not working now so here is another go.

Copy /usr/bin/ecryptfs-set-private to somewhere you can edit it.

Look for the line

CRYPTDIR="$HOME/.$PRIVATE_DIR"

and change it to

CRYPTDIR="$HOME/Dropbox/.$PRIVATE_DIR"

and then run the command. This will then set it up all in the correct place to start with. So lets see if this works a bit better.

You could proably do all this by hand but this way it sets up all the pam stuff so that it should be mounted at login.