Comments on: Encrypted home on Ubuntu using cryptoloop

By: relet

relet — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 10:55:20 +0000

If you suddenly cannot execute files on your encrypted disk anymore, remove the “user” option from /etc/security/pam_mount.conf.xml in the last few lines. It overrides the exec option, effectively mounting your drive as “noexec”. You will receive errors like:
bash: ./executable: Permission denied.
also, /usr/bin/env will fail to execute python and other scripts correctly.

By: Dany Chouinard

Dany Chouinard — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:40:30 +0000

Nice tutorial, was great help for me. I used it to complement a linuxmagazine tutorial (august 2003 : Implementing Encrypted Home Directories by Mike Petullo).

I was just wondering, Have you figured what to if the user change it’s password (which he does every 6-8 month, of course, isn’t it?).

By: ravn

ravn — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:28:45 +0000

Without having tried, would it be possible to encrypt the file system with another password than the user password? Having the same password stored in two places, /etc/shadow and USER.key makes it more vulnerable.

By: Kalisto

Kalisto — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:43:36 +0000

Great Tutorial!! btw

# echo “@include common-pammount” >> /etc/pam.d/common-auth
# echo “@include common-pammount” >> /etc/pam.d/common-session

should be:

# echo @include common-pammount >> /etc/pam.d/common-auth
# echo @include common-pammount >> /etc/pam.d/common-session

and:
echo “volume ${USER} auto – /home/${USER}.img /home/${USER} loop,user,exec,encryption=aes,keybits=${KEYSIZE} aes-${KEYSIZE}-ecb /home/${USER}.key” >> /etc/security/pam_mount.conf

should be:
echo volume ${USER} auto – /home/${USER}.img /home/${USER} loop,user,exec,encryption=aes,keybits=${KEYSIZE} aes-${KEYSIZE}-ecb /home/${USER}.key >> /etc/security/pam_mount.conf

Also there is a bug with ubuntu and pam mount:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/libpam-mount/ bug/117736