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FileVault Lite
Authored by: jdw2004 on Oct 05, '07 12:50:51PM
I've done something like this. If you don't want your private filesystem to show up under /Volumes, you can mount it like so:
hdiutil attach -encryption CEncryptedEncoding -stdinpass image.dmg -mountpoint /path/to/mount/point
To detach it, use
hdiutil detach /path/to/mount/point
Also very cool is that you can union-mount an encrypted filesystem over your existing home directory, which lets things in both the encrypted filesystem and your pre-existing home directory remain accessible, but any new files go into the last-mounted filesystem. You can do that like so:
hdiutil attach -encryption CEncryptedEncoding -stdinpass image.dmg -mountpoint ~ -union
To detach a union-mounted home directory, cd out of your home directory, make sure nothing is accessing it, and run
hdiutil detach ~
I'm not sure if you can actually do that when logged in at the graphical console, though; it may only work for SSH logins.

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FileVault Lite
Authored by: osxpounder on Oct 08, '07 03:33:52PM

Now that's a fascinating comment. I'll try that first bit.

I've used the encrypted disk image trick for years [several of them], and I thought I'd submitted the same hint before [can't recall for sure].

Anyway, here's another warning, in addition to the ones above:

If you have an encrypted image mounted, and your Mac crashes [as in, kernel panic, or, as happened with me once, the FireWire cable gets disconnected while an image on the external FW drive is mounted], you may lose all the data in the encrypted disk. It won't mount again. Happened to me.

Sure, you could send it to some company to let them try reconstructing it, but then it's not secret stuff anymore, is it?

It bugs me that Disk Utility, by default, assumes I want the password added to my keychain. I must remember to uncheck that box every time I create an encrypted image.



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