# Truecrypt/Alternative on FreeBSD



## cra1g321 (Apr 27, 2011)

Hey everyone, I'm new to FreeBSD, I've used windows and am currently on linux so I'm interested to see what the BSD flavors are like 

Anyway I have a second-hand HDD which has all my important files/folders. This drive contains a Truecrypt partition, which I just mount/unmount using Truecrypt whenever I need to backup a file/folder.

Was wanting to know if Truecrypt runs on FreeBSD using the linux emulation, or is there an alternative program similar to Truecrypt which offers similar features?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.


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## graudeejs (Apr 27, 2011)

There is alternative, but it's FreeBSD specific
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/disks-encrypting.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/swap-encrypting.html
geli(8)

Also search forum in howto section, there are few howtos about encryption


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## olav (Apr 27, 2011)

Geli is pretty good, very reliable and fast!


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## cra1g321 (Apr 27, 2011)

Did a bit of searching on the how-to forum before I made this thread but most were about encrypting the home directory/partition rather than just a separate partition on a separate HDD. I'll look at the documentation and see what ways I could set it up. Was thinking I could maybe have the whole second HDD for my /home partition and having it encrypted.

I know I'm probably not allowed to ask a different question in this thread but one thing also required is a way to connect to my VPN. It's an OpenVPN VPN which on linux I use the NetworkManager to connect to, but doing a bit of searching on google it seems this tool isn't available for FreeBSD.

Is there an alternative program or way I can set up my computer to connect to VPN when I want it to? If you want me to move this question to a new thread then just say.


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## DutchDaemon (Apr 27, 2011)

Connecting to a VPN has no relation with encrypting/decrypting disk contents, so yes, creating a new thread would be advisable.


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## ondra_knezour (Apr 27, 2011)

OpenVPN is available security/openvpn and is usable without any other tool. There is also GUI security/openvpn-admin and security/kovpn (not known to me).


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## cra1g321 (Apr 27, 2011)

Thanks for the help guys. I'll install FreeBSD here again and see how I get on.
Wish me luck


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## graudeejs (Apr 27, 2011)

cra1g321 said:
			
		

> Did a bit of searching on the how-to forum before I made this thread but most were about encrypting the home directory/partition rather than just a separate partition on a separate HDD. I'll look at the documentation and see what ways I could set it up. Was thinking I could maybe have the whole second HDD for my /home partition and having it encrypted.



It doesn't matter what you encrypt, the basic method is absolutely the same be it entire Disk, partition, slice, swap, SSD or heck even file


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## FBSD (Apr 30, 2011)

*Truecrypt replacement(s) for FreeBSD*

If you want to use an encrypted file, folder or container between FreeBSD and other operating systems, you could use GnuPG encryption (security/gnupg) or create an encrypted file archive with 7-zip (archivers/p7zip).


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## Zare (May 1, 2011)

GELI is not really an TrueCrypt alternative. Both can be used for same stuff, but the former is implemented in kernel, and latter in userland. Besides there's a portability issue, TrueCrypt runs on multiple platforms while GELI runs only on FreeBSD. And, as far as I know, only root can use GELI subsystem.

The way I see it, GELI belongs to kind of tools that sysadmins use, while TrueCrypt fits into normal user tools category.


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## cra1g321 (May 3, 2011)

Zare said:
			
		

> GELI is not really an TrueCrypt alternative. Both can be used for same stuff, but the former is implemented in kernel, and latter in userland. Besides there's a portability issue, TrueCrypt runs on multiple platforms while GELI runs only on FreeBSD. And, as far as I know, only root can use GELI subsystem.
> 
> The way I see it, GELI belongs to kind of tools that sysadmins use, while TrueCrypt fits into normal user tools category.



Yeah I think Truecrypt really does need to come to BSDs. I haven't tried encrypting the hard drive yet, currently I use Truecrypt for adding files to the partition on the second drive, then I have an external drive which is a backup of the partition.  So I'm going to have to use a backup tool along with encryption tools on FreeBSD 

It's sadly things like this thats makes me just run back to what I used before trying FreeBSD, which is a shame because I like the ports system and other features that BSD flavours offer.


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## cra1g321 (May 3, 2011)

I guess I could always go with PC-BSD and its encryption option, but I find it way too bloated/resource-heavy compared to FreeBSD + XFCE 
and I'm not a big KDE fan anyway, though I think there's going to be other flavours of PC-BSD with next release, so would be nice to see an XFCE or even Gnome version of PC-BSD.


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