Encrypt/Decrypt a folder

[jacobsh]

I've seen all sorts of utilites for encrypting files, but I've yet to figure out how to just encrypt an entire folder. I wrote a bash script to tar a folder and then encrypt it, but it takes way too long! Isn't there a nice gui tool for this? Thanks

[awdac]

If you have KDE installed, you can use Kgpg, which is a gui front end/key manager for Gnupg. If you have it running, you can just drags files and drop them onto the Kgpg icon to encrypt them. It works well from Konqueror.

[Void Main]

If you haven't already looked you might get some ideas here:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Disk-Encryption-HOWTO/index.html

[macemoneta]

The amount of time it takes to encrypt/decrypt is a function of the amount of data involved, obviously. Processing large files takes time.

The standard GUI interface to gnupg is call gpa - the Gnu Privacy Assistant (http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/related_software/gpa/index.html).

You'll need to install gpa (it's in the Fedora Extras (http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/extras/3/) repository), if you don't already have it:

yum -y install gpa or
rpm -Uvh gpa-x.y.z.rpm

Once you have the prerequisite, the easiest way to encrypt a directory:

1. In Nautilus, right click on the directory and select "Create archive". This will create a "directoryname.tar.gz" file.

2. From the Applications->Accessories menu, run GPA. Your existing gnupg key(s) will show up. Click on the "Files" button, and in the Files window, click on the "Open" button to select the "directoryname.tar.gz" file. Click on the "Encrypt" button. If you are going to email the encrypted file, make sure you select the "Armor" checkbox.

To decrypt, reverse the process.

If you don't already have a key, you can create a new one from the gpa "Keys" menu.

[jacobsh]

Thanks, you guys have been a huge help.

However, I still can't get it to work. With KGPG, I get "no public key found" and I get the same error with GPA. If I try to use symmetric encryption with GPA, I get a "general error". I do have a key. Any ideas about what's going on? Thanks

[macemoneta]

Are your keys in the ~/.gnupg directory (where they are created by default)?

When I first installed gpa, the keys were initially not found (I had moved them to another directory). When I moved them back to the default location and re-ran gpa, all the keys showed up.

[james_in_denver]

I would recomment creating a "loopback" filesystem, and using the "losetup" package to encrypt it. You can then mount the "loopback" filesystem like any other, (except now with encryption), and when you unmount the filesystem, you just have a single strongly encrypted file.

If you want more details on how to do that let me know....