I want to create a directory for storing personnal sensitive information like usernames and passwords. I also want this information to be encrypted and only decrypted by entering a security code which should be determined by me. I'm using linux - openSuSe and i want do it at the CLI(Level 3).

Thanks for your help.

Hmm, there are some types of real-time encrypted filing systems available, but IMO they are not trivial (for a casual user) to impliment or get going. In certain situations or power-loss scenarios they can even be dangerous, becoming undecryptable (ever!) or unusable.

IMO the easiest, quickest way to reliably encrypt or decrypt sensitive data is to simply use the p7zip archiver. It was a quite powerful encryption feature you can use, and is reasonably user friendly.

I. e. what I'd do is to simply tar the directory, then 7zip it up, encrypting with a password. For casual use, that should be more then secure. Note, this is of course a MANUAL way to do it. However, it is very simple to do it this way, and safer, than doing it on the fly on an encrypted filing system. If you, for example, forget to tar/7zip encrypt the folder, it will be "in the clear" and thus a security risk. If you absolutely must have on the fly encryption, you -will- need a real encrypted filing system though.

So Rylan 76,

In the most basic way, how do i simply create the directory for storing these sensitive information and how do i get them stored. Lets reserve the encryption for now. I will be glad if u can help me with specific commands to use. Thanks.

have you tried TrueCrypt ? It will create file and the you can mount it as a disk or revoable disk... i'm using it under linux and windows

It's not as easy as to create an encrypted directory.

You can encrypt individual files if you want, but to encrypt the files automatically on a given directory you need to create an encrypted filesystem. A way to do it, if you don't want to toy with partitions, is to create a loopback file. This process is described here:

http://h3g3m0n.wordpress.com/2007/04...ck-filesystem/

SuSE's YaST2 partitioner can create an encrypted file for you and add an entry for it to fstab. You need the pass phrase to mount it via a loop back device. You can mount it inside your home directory. Add the "noauto" option to defer mounting it when the computer boots up if there is more than one user.