Securely Share Data on Dual Boot Machine

[jmadero]

Hi All,

What's the easiest way for me to share my data across users on two different linux distros. I'm dual booting Ubuntu and Badhi, both are linked to the same partition /home but different user names. What is the easiest way to share (read and write access) for stuff from my Ubuntu user to my Badhi user. Thanks in advance

[atreyu]

You could use LUKS, it is a fairly commonplace filesystem encryption solution for Linux, though I don't know if the packages are available in those two distros.

Another solution is TrueCrypt. I use it a lot to share data b/t dualbooted machines that are Linux/Windows, but it would certainly work for two Linux boxes, too. It has both command line and GUI versions and is very scriptable.

Edit: Forgot good old gpg (GnuPG, free implementation of PGP - Pretty Good Privacy). Using the file-as-a-filesystem concept (you can do this w/TrueCrypt, too), you could (symmetrically or asymmetrically) encrypt a file with gpg. This is not as easy an option with Windows which is why I forgot to mention it before. Bonus is gpg is definitely available in your software repos.

[elija]

If I wanted to share data between different distros on the same physical machine, I would store it on a separate partition and mount that into the users' home directories. Encryption of the partition is also possible.