I just got a large new hard drive and I think that I'd like to protect my data a bit better. Encryption seems to be the way to go, but I am concerned about changing away from my current Kubuntu to another distribution in the future, and suddenly being locked out of my files.

If I mount an encrypted file system, will any POSIX OS (with the correct packaages like dm-crypt or cryptoloop) be able to prompt for a password, properly unlock the drive, and mount the volume without problems?

Or will I be somewhat forced to deal with minor variations in the precompiled 'cryption software which will lead to compiling headaches down the road?

Are there any concerns that I should consider before doing this?

I liked "encfs" a lot. It is part of fuse-encfs package (http://arg0.net/wiki/encfs).

It is handy because I can choose to make just a few directories with sensitive information encrypted, not the whole filesystem, and I can decrypt my folder just when I need it, not at the boot time.

I even create an action on Nautilus (the gnome's filemanager) to encrypt and decrypt a folder using the right's button menu. Very easy to use. Just drop the plain files there and they become encrypted. I can use the files from that location, directly, not need to decrypt it before. And the passphrase is given only once, at the mount time.

This solution is good for a multiuser environment. No need the superuser permissions, it is just a user's space solution.

I like the sounds of that... Any idea how well that works in an KDE or XFCE or Enlightenment environment?

It is a command line tool, just like every thing else.

Use ...
... to mount the previous created .your-hidden-encripted-folder at here-is-the-decrypted-folder. It will ask your passphrase at that time or you can pass a program to read the password from. I make my nautilus action using zenity to entry the passphrase, but you can use the kdialog.

To unmount, just issue
You can create a script that test if the mount point is already mounted and if so, then unmount it, else, mount it asking the passphrase with kdialog.

Use this script as a konqueror's script (i don't remember exactly how KDE named this). If you want I can post my script tomorrow (it is in my home, not at work) so you don't need to start from scratch. let me know.

cheers,

marozsas, thank you for the info! yeah, the script might help me out, if you'd post it. i've been lazy on this point lately and its still a good idea for me to start working with an encrypted fs.