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98 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
98 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
# EncFS - an Encrypted Filesystem
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_Build Status_
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- Travis: [](https://travis-ci.org/vgough/encfs)
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## About
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EncFS provides an encrypted filesystem in user-space. It runs in userspace,
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using the FUSE library for the filesystem interface. EncFS is open source
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software, licensed under the LGPL.
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EncFS is now over 15 years old (first release in 2003). It was written because
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older NFS and kernel-based encrypted filesystems such as CFS had not kept pace with Linux
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development. When FUSE became available, I wrote a CFS replacement for my own
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use and released the first version to Open Source in 2003.
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EncFS encrypts individual files, by translating all requests for the virtual
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EncFS filesystem into the equivalent encrypted operations on the raw
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filesystem.
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For more info, see:
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- The excellent [encfs manpage](encfs/encfs.pod)
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- The technical overview in [DESIGN.md](DESIGN.md)
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## Status
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Over the last 15 years, a number of good alternatives have grown up. Computing
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power has increased to the point where it is reasonable to encrypt the entire
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filesystem of personal computers (and even mobile phones!). On Linux, ecryptfs
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provides a nice dynamically mountable encrypted home directory, and is well
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integrated in distributions I use, such as Ubuntu.
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EncFS has been dormant for a while. I've started cleaning up in order to try
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and provide a better base for a version 2, but whether EncFS flowers again
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depends upon community interest. In order to make it easier for anyone to
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contribute, it is moving a new home on GitHub (2014). Since then project has
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been updated a few times thanks to several contributors, so if you're
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interested in EncFS, please dive in!
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## Unique Features
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EncFS has a few features still not found anywhere else (as of Dec 2014)
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that may be interesting to you:
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### Reverse mode
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`encfs --reverse` provides an encrypted view of an unencrypted folder.
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This enables encrypted remote backups using standard tools like rsync.
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### Fast on classical HDDs
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EncFS is typically *much* faster than ecryptfs for stat()-heavy workloads
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when the backing device is a classical hard disk.
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This is because ecryptfs has to to read each file header to determine
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the file size - EncFS does not. This is one additional seek for each
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stat.
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See [PERFORMANCE.md](PERFORMANCE.md) for detailed benchmarks on
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HDD, SSD and ramdisk.
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### Works on top of network filesystems
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EncFS works on network file systems (NFS, CIFS...), while ecryptfs
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is known to still have [problems][1].
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[1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ecryptfs/+bug/277578
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## Development
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The master branch contains the latest stable codebase. This is where bug fixes
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and improvments should go.
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The [dev](https://github.com/vgough/encfs/tree/dev) branch contains experimental
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work, some of which may be back-ported to the master branch when it is stable. The
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dev branch is not stable, and there is no guarantee of backward compatibility
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between changes.
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## Donations
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How about a nice email instead?
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## Windows
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EncFS works on Cygwin, there are also some Windows ports.
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See [the wiki](https://github.com/vgough/encfs/wiki)
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for additional info.
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## FAQ
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### What settings should I use for Dropbox?
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Use **standard mode**. There [have](https://github.com/vgough/encfs/issues/141)
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been [reports](https://github.com/vgough/encfs/issues/388)
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of a pathological interaction of paranoia mode with Dropbox' rename
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detection. The problem seems to be with `External IV chaining`, which is
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not active in standard mode.
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