Steve, On Sep 21, 2009, at 1:57 PM, Steven Bellovin wrote:
Is there any way to use FileVault on MacOS except on home directories?
FileVault is essentially just the name for a plain encrypted disk image which happens to have some voodoo associated with it to get pivoted in as your homedir at login. This to say, you can make arbitrarily many encrypted disk images with Disk Utility and use them as individual encrypted (non-homedir) folders. If you're asking whether you can turn on encryption for existing system folders, the answer is no; HFS+ itself offers no encryption facilities.
I suppose I could install TrueCrypt (other suggestions or comments on TrueVault?), but I prefer to minimize the amount of extra software I have to maintain.
TrueCrypt is a fine solution and indeed very helpful if you need cross- platform encrypted volumes; it lets you trivially make an encrypted USB key you can use on Linux, Windows and OS X. If you're *just* talking about OS X, I don't believe TrueCrypt offers any advantages over encrypted disk images unless you're big on conspiracy theories.
Cheers, -- Ivan Krstić <krs...@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | http://radian.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majord...@metzdowd.com
