Arch Linux

tanis

Member

From: Poland / Waterloo, ON, Canada

Registered: 2007-04-21

Posts: 259

truecrypt and LUKS volume manager

UPDATE: Now the crypt manager is called 'startcrypt' and supports both LUKS and truecrypt.

Hi.

I have started using truecrypt for encrypting partition with all my private files,
like mozilla passwords, mail messages, IM history etc. - all files I wouldn't like to
be read if my laptop is lost. In my home directory I have symlinks to those secret files/directories
placed on a separate partition. Of course it is possible to encrypt whole /home/ partition, but I didn't
want to do that. Anyway, it was necessary to enter password for that partition,
and mount it before I log into my user, so before kdm starts.

So I created script for doing that. It is based on network profile selector dialog. It uses
files describing encrypted partitions placed in /etc/crypt-profiles/ - similar to /etc/network-profiles/.
I can specify the device, mount point and some optional truecrypt options. Then I put
/etc/rc.d/crypt somewhere in DAEMONS in rc.conf - so it is executed before kdm.

That ways I get a dialog-based menu, where I can choose partitions I want to mount from all available
profiles, and enter their passwords. If there is only one profile, there is only a password dialog.
Of course it is not necessary to enter passwords for all of the profiles. The dialog can be discarded.

The script also unloads those partitions during system reboot. It is possible to use hidden partition
(by entering different password), but it is not currently possible to use normal partition in 'hidden
partition safe' mode.

Here are some screenshots:

And here is AUR package:

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?K=startcrypt

You can also see how the profile file looks like:

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/start … t/template

Tell me what you think about that!

Last edited by tanis (2007-11-11 03:38:33)

uwolfer

Member

Registered: 2006-02-27

Posts: 46

Re: truecrypt and LUKS volume manager

I like the idea very much!

I need to try it out on my notebook.

tanis

Member

From: Poland / Waterloo, ON, Canada

Registered: 2007-04-21

Posts: 259

Re: truecrypt and LUKS volume manager

I have modified the script to support both truecrypt and LUKS.
It is now renamed to 'startcrypt' and is here: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?K=startcrypt

(truecrypt package is still present, for now at least)