Password Protect One Folder inside Another Folder

[Al Gordon]

On 11/12/05, Wade Smart <wade at wadesmart.com> wrote:
> 11122005 1003 GMT-5
>
> I know this sounds odd, but, Im working on getting the local school to
> see the benefit of using linux over windows. I have been asked to set up
> something to present to the administration. That's all great but they
> have some things they want me to be able to do - one of those is to
> password protect a certain folder or file.
>
> I just recently asked about permissions and ownership and that was very
> helpful - and I received lots of links to great information. However, if
> you just want to password protect one single folder inside say your home
> directory - how can you do that?
>
> Would you just create a new owner and then use a script similar to the
> one on the UbuntuGuide for Open As Root - you would just create Open as Bob?
>
> Wade


I realize you had some answers to this already.  However, something
else to look at might be encfs.  It's in Universe.  Here's some info
on it:

al at hungan:~$ apt-cache show encfs
Package: encfs
Priority: optional
Section: universe/utils
Installed-Size: 924
Maintainer: Eduard Bloch <blade at debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 1.2.0-3build1
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.4-1), libfuse2, libgcc1 (>= 1:4.0.0-7),
librlog1c2, libssl0.9.7, libstdc++6 (>= 4.0.0-7)
Filename: pool/universe/e/encfs/encfs_1.2.0-3build1_i386.deb
Size: 262074
MD5sum: 39538deadd2058d28b71c4aa3329c74f
Description: encrypted virtual filesystem
 EncFS integrates file system encryption into the Unix(TM) file system.
 Encrypted data is stored within the native file system, thus no
 fixed-size loopback image is required.
 .
 EncFS uses the FUSE kernel driver and library as a backend. You may
 need to install the kernel modules, running "module-assistant a-i
 fuse".
Bugs: mailto:ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
Origin: Ubuntu



What's nice about encfs is that it works at the file and directory
level, rather than at the filesystem level.  It's easy to implement on
the spot.

What's not so nice about it is that it's an interactive text shell
app, not a GUI kind of thing, so it's not as "user friendly" as
certain other solutions.  However, I'm sure that a simple gui could be
written to wrapper it, if that's really necessary.

--

  -- AL --