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65 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
65 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
# EncFS - an Encrypted Filesystem
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[](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 10 years old (first release in 2003). It was written because
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older NFS-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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## Status
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Over the last 10 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. So if you're interested in
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EncFS, please dive in!
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EncFS still has a few unique features that may be interesing to you:
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* `--reverse` mode: Provides an encrypted view of an unencrypted folder.
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This enables encrypted remote backups using standard tools like
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rsync.
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* EncFS is typically 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. On SSDs that have virtually no seek time, that difference may
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disappear.
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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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## GitHub Transition
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GitHub hosting for EncFS is a work in progress. See also the original, and
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more complete, introduction page at http://www.arg0.net/encfs
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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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[1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ecryptfs/+bug/277578
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