Encrypted user account?

[wmrobins]

Is there a way to create a encrypted user account? I'd like to have one normal account and one encrypted one.

Thanks in advance,

wmrobins

[kevinc]

Re: Encrypted user account?

Have a look at this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/En...lesystemHowto3

and this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FolderEncryption

or this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/En...DirectoryHowto

You can add an encrypted directory during installation using the alternate CD, instead of the live CD. The procedure is not too complicated. There are lots of options for encryption look for howto's on dm-crypt, encryptfs and fuse.

[wmrobins]

Re: Encrypted user account?

kevinc,

Thanks for your reply. Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you.

I had seen ad read the first two links you sited and they kinda miss the mark. The third one, however, I missed and it looks very promising. I think I'll try it in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks again,

wmrobins

[kevinc]

Re: Encrypted user account?

If I understand you correctly, you want to have (at least) two users on your system, one user having an encrypted account and one user having a normal account.

There is an option to have within normal accounts, one part encrypted and one part not encrypted, but it seems this is not what you want.

I suppose technically there is no such thing as an encrypted account, but you can encrypt a partition quite easily and you can use that encrypted partition for one or more users. Since dm-crypt is built into the 2.6 kernel it makes sense to use that. Debian and Kubuntu also recommend it.

I use an encrypted /home with one account for myself, I don't have another non encrypted account. This can be done either during installation, or, after installation. The only present requirement is that /boot not be encrypted.

There are two broad ideas on encryption. One says encrypt everything except /boot - easily done by making one ext3 partition for /boot and one encrypted physical partition which is divided into any number of logical partitions for /, swap, /home using lvm. The other one says that just about everything except for /home and swap is available on the internet (unless you run a server), so no point in encrypting that; only encrpt what is yours and not public.

Linux allows you to make you own system to suit your particular needs, based on general ideas that others have used to meet their particular needs. HTH.