Creating a new user after install with encrypted home

Question

Just trying to set up a secondary user after install on 12.04. My last system was 10.04 and it allowed me to create a new user with an encrypted home partition but when creating a new user on 12.04 there is no option to encrypt home partition. Do I need to install another package or am I missing something?

desgua · Answer 1 · 2012-06-01T09:37:24.110

19

It is a bug of 12.04, see here.

You can workaround creating the user from terminal. The command is:
adduser --encrypt-home username (change "username" for the user name you want).

edited Jun 01 '12 at 09:37

answered May 06 '12 at 02:29

desgua

32,917

The --encrypt-home switch is also missing. $ sudo useradd --encrypt-home newuser useradd: unrecognised option '--encrypt-home' $ uname -a Linux username -VGN-FZ11S 3.2.0-24-generic-pae ... i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux – May 07 '12 at 02:23
4

@Richard Did you run useradd or adduser? Both commands exist, but adduser is the one you want. (Also you'll need to run it as root with sudo, i.e., sudo adduser --encrypt-home username.) – Eliah Kagan Jun 01 '12 at 05:42
1

for 15.10 I had to install package ecryptfs-utils before I could use --encrypt-home – Jim Ford Mar 01 '16 at 16:10

score 10 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 21 '12 at 19:59

10

This seems to be fixed at the command line level.

sudo adduser --encrypt-home username

(Change "username" for the user name you want.)

Just worked for me in an up to date 12.04 Precise Pangolin ie.it created a new user with an encrypted home directory.

If you receive an error message :

adduser: unable to find a program named « ecryptfs-setup-private » in $PATH"...

Adding the package « ecryptfs-utils » solves this problem (thanks, apt-file...) :

apt-get install ecryptfs-utils

edited Sep 21 '12 at 19:59

fossfreedom

172,746

answered Jun 01 '12 at 02:34

user67597

101

if accessing the user using su, make sure to run ecryptfs-mount-private – Aryeh Beitz Oct 31 '17 at 05:53

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 30 '12 at 00:45

2

You just need another user & group admin tool:

sudo apt-get install gnome-system-tools

Then go to dash and search for Users and Groups. Add a new user and check "Encrypt home folder to protect sensitive data". Remember to take extra precautions if you don't want sensitive data to leak into the log files (eg. /var/log/), temp files (eg. /tmp), the swap space, etc.

edited Dec 30 '12 at 00:45

Community

1

answered Aug 10 '12 at 00:14

Giovanni

21

Doesn't seem to work under 14.04. – detly Jan 15 '15 at 09:46
Did not work in 18.04. – SaTa Sep 15 '19 at 21:41

Creating a new user after install with encrypted home

3 Answers3