home on a gbde encrypted partion

[Robert Storey]

On Sat, 22 May 2004 12:54:29 +0200
platanthera <platanthera at web.de> wrote:

> On Friday 21 May 2004 17:49, platanthera wrote:
> > hi all,
> >
> > I want to move my home directory to a gbde encrypted partition.
> > I plan to have only the default dotfiles in /home/xxx (before
> > mounting the encrypted partition), log in as usual, attach and fsck
> > the encrypted partion and then mount it 'over' /home/xxx.
> > Is there anything wrong with this approach?
> 
> hmm... obviously there is something wrong. I can't unmount my current 
> home directory later. Not really surprising..

Interesting question. File /etc/passwd is where the system determines where a
user's data files will
be located. For example, user "robert" on my system:

root at sonic:~> cat /etc/passwd | grep robert
robert:*:1005:1006:User &:/home/robert:/usr/local/bin/bash

So just create a special user (using sysinstall), perhaps user "secure". Instead
of putting his login directory at /home/secure, put it on /secure (a directory
you manually create) and (as root) mount /secure on an encrypted partition.
After /secure is mounted, login as user secure. You'll have to tweak permissions
of course so that user secure can read/write files on this partition.

regards,
Robert