Gnupg in windows

**jasonkelly** · 09-30-2003

Ok, so i finally got RH8.0 to work on my laptop at home and i love it

, but i cant seem to convince my boss to switch from winblows. I've installed Gnupg on my computer at work, but i havent used it at home yet. Not only does Gnupg encrypt emails, but it can also encrypt files on your hard drive. So my ? is: can Gnupg encrypt entire directories, or is it limited to single files? Whenever i try to encrypt a directory, it just makes an archive file that i cant access. Like i said, i havent tried this at home (on linux) yet, but i plan to. I'm assuming that i will have the same problem with linux, and I know this isnt a winblows forum, but any help would be great.

P.S. I have been using the graphical interface, if that makes any difference ?

**sykkn** · 09-30-2003

In linux you can encrypt a directory in a round about way using tar.

Code:

Ecrypt&#58; 

#  tar c somedir | gpg -e -r 'someone@somewhere.com' > somedir.gpg

Decrypt&#58;

#  gpg -d somedir.gpg | tar x

I can help you with the windows client. I have not used it.

**Hellmasker** · 09-30-2003

taht will leave him wiht archves tho. i fu want directories encrypted but still useable as normal u need to switch to a fs that supports encrypted filesystems

**jasonkelly** · 09-30-2003

"u need to switch to a fs that supports"

sorry for being such a noob, but what do you mean by fs?

**Hellmasker** · 10-01-2003

i assume u know windows, think fat32 -> ntfs

in order to get real tiem encryption u need to use a filesysetm otyehr than the default ext2/3. It would require a reasonable amount of work tho coz as afar as i know u pretty m,uch have to back up everything then reformat ur HDD. (or do 1 partition at a time).

Im not entirely sure which fs's support encryption but ive heard lotsa good things about both reiserfs and XFS. try looking up the specs on those (use google or something) and see if they mention encryption.

**blue** · 10-02-2003

I know zero on this topic... but theoretically, could you have your normal drives in ext2/3 but say your /home directory mounted on a fs that supports encryption?

Jason, "fs" = File System

edit: I'm assuming that you want to encrypt the drive on your laptop in case you lose it or something. Then encrypting only /home should suffice as that's where your important data would be kept. On the other hand, is that really necessary? You could always just turn off single-user mode and put on a power-on password... but I guess that doesn't protect the HD if it gets stolen, does it?

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