I have access to a remote samba filesystem that is good for backup storage etc. However I don't entirely trust the operator\security. So I'd like to encrypt what I put onto the samba drive. I tried mounting the samba drive, then remounting it with EncryFS fut that fails, so can anybody recommend a way of mounting the filesystem in Debian so that I can see it as a normal filesystem, but the remote on only see encrypted data.

As a side not I planning using rsync to copy data to the drive once it is encrypted.

You can create an ecryptFS file system on top of a local filesystem, it just doesn't work with NFS or samba. Evidently it needs low level access to the filesystem.

So can anybody suggest an alternative??

Are there any nasty implications if I was to keep an encrypted mirror on the local machine, then rsync that to the samba drive? One I can think of is it could be near impossible to find the file I want if I need a single file.

You'd need access to encrypt the target for most common encryption. If you can't manage the target then you have to create a mounted file system on share. Then mount the image. It should be the same as making an encrypted loop filesystem locally.

It should be pretty trivial to make a local image backup protected by some scheme then move it. The only issue may be how the scheme used parameters to encrypt. You wouldn't want to use a scheme that needed local key that could be lost in a crash.

I suppose it may be possible to use something like truecrypt.

I'll look into TrueCrpyt.

I was thinking mount a local partion using encryptfs then rsunc onto that. Come to that why not just keep the entire drive encrypted. Then rsync the base filesystem to the remote drive. If it comes to keeping a local keep, I could keep a copy a at a different remote location, such as an attachment to an email to myself. Or even on a USB Key.