Encrypted HOME is pointless if KDE has TEMP in /VAR/

[nicolasdiogo]

hello

my laptop uses an encrypted home partition to keep all my files safe.

i really like the advancements in KDE - i have used gnome since 2005 (or SuSE 8 ).

But i can not understand the point of having KDE writing to temporary folder outside my home partition.

is there some way of moving this location??

i have tried creating a folder under /home/$USER/temp/tmp/kdecache-$USER
and then creating a syslink in /var/tmp/ pointing to it - but that fails with error:

Error: "/var/tmp/kdecache-<USER>" is not a directory.
Bus:pen: Can not get ibus-daemon's address.

many thanks in advance,


Nicolas

[dibl]

Re: Encrypted HOME is pointless if KDE has TEMP in /VAR/

Have you examined the contents of the /var/tmp KDE caches? I'm not expert on it, but it appears to me it is nothing but icons and wallpaper. Is there any transfer of actual user data to that location? I am playing with a spreadsheet while watching the /var/tmp caches, and I don't see any sign of real data there.

[nicolasdiogo]

Re: Encrypted HOME is pointless if KDE has TEMP in /VAR/

thanks dibl,

it may not have anything there now.
does it mean that it will not have anything relevant *ever*?

i am just sceptical that KDE should be using that location at all. that is why i tend to monitor it.
after encrypting my HOME partition i am trying to ensure that my data is safe and KDE is not really helping on that front.

any suggestion on how i can make KDE use a different location instead?

thanks,

[dibl]

Re: Encrypted HOME is pointless if KDE has TEMP in /VAR/

any suggestion on how i can make KDE use a different location instead?

I'm not enough of a KDE engineer to know how to do that. Because of the location in the system directories, this particular cache function would appear to be designed to support any/all users, thus (understanding the security objectives of the GNU/Linux developers) I would think it safe to assume user data cannot go there.

One idea that I thought of, to make it only a temporary cache while the system is running, would be to mount /var/tmp as a tmpfs. That way it would "disappear" when your system is shut down.

[nicolasdiogo]

Re: Encrypted HOME is pointless if KDE has TEMP in /VAR/

thanks,

i will leave it for now and continue to monitor it.

[claydoh]

Re: Encrypted HOME is pointless if KDE has TEMP in /VAR/

you could always put var on its own partition and ecrypt that (and don't forget to encrypt your swap file as well)

There is a ton of info on this out there, the ubuntu wiki has gobs to sift through just for starters