Ubuntu Encrypted Loopback Disk

Friday, 03 October 2008 21:47

So I have a need for a encrypted disk - as a loop back file. I wrote earlier on how to restore a partimage backup to loopback, so lets see if we can make this work.

We need to tell the kernal how to encrypt disks with a module
- ```
modprobe cryptoloop
```
Create the loop file (like before, but with urandom to help hide the disk, the count is MB*1000 so in this case 1M)
- ```
dd if=/dev/urandom of=myharddisk.img bs=1000 count=1000 
```
Create the loopback device (I'm going to use TwoFish)
- ```
losetup -e twofish /dev/loop0 ./myharddisk.img
```
At this point, you will be asked for a password - create your own
Create the file system of choice (ext3 for me)
- ```
mkfs.ext3 /dev/loop0  
```
Mount the new loop back point /dev/loop0
- ```
mount /dev/loop0 /mnt/my/mount/point
```