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Is there such a software that allows you to enter different passwords. When you login with one of them you can see all your files, but when you put in the another one, you can only view selected files?

MadMike
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belay neh
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  • Having different files and a password for each user sounds like your classic per user home directory. But since you are explaining in length that's probably not what you are looking for. You seem to want to allow different passwords, like if you would be forced to reveal your password that you can reveal one and whoever forced you would only see a bunch of innocent stuff? – MadMike Jan 13 '15 at 06:30
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    Your search keyword is "plausible deniability". – MadMike Jan 13 '15 at 13:09
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    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Plausible+deniability+ – MadMike Jan 13 '15 at 18:43
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    This isn't program to install. It describes what you want to have compressed in two words: "Plausible deniability". I mentioned it in order to help you find your own solution using search machines and while explaining it to other people. – MadMike Jan 14 '15 at 06:59

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You should elaborate on you true intentions. If you are trying to setup a local file share that you can edit and others can read then simply set the permissions of those files to readonly for others. If you are setting up an online file share like Dropbox then the process is the same.

Phil Lawlor
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  • I am not asking how to setup up a local file share. Here is what i meant: you have two passwords for one user( it is offline work). when the first password is entered, the person can view everything, however, if the second one is entered, the person only sees a bunch of stuff that you want him to see.say somebody of higher authorities and power forces you to tell them your password. then you tell them the second password and as they login to your account, they can only see limited things. – belay neh Jan 13 '15 at 09:13
  • Unless you are custom creating something most systems use one username/password combination it is more secure. – Phil Lawlor Jan 21 '15 at 14:07
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What about using something like TrueCrypt? Don't know if this exists for Ubuntu and yeah, I heard that they stopped developing and say they are not 100% safe anymore, but if you don't have to hide things from the FBI/... this is more than enough. You can create virtal volumes that you save either as a file on your disk (you can also hide it e.g. in a video file) or in unpartitioned space on your disk. Any encrypted data created by TrueCrypt should theoretically look like random numbers and therefore your boss or anybody should not be able to see even IF you have encrypted data. But I don't know if it only exists (existed) for Windiws, though...

Byte Commander
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  • It does exist for Ubuntu: http://askubuntu.com/q/174872/75166 , there are two more things you should add to your answer: - If you loose your Trucrpyt password there is no way to recover your data. - Installing Truecrypt is just the first step, using the passwords from the Login-shell and having your home automount your volume is a different story. – MadMike Jan 14 '15 at 07:06
  • They forked TrueCrypt into VeraCrypt and CipherShed, you should probably be looking into using those. Or just use the build in encryption of Ubuntu (ecryptfs or LUKS). http://veracrypt.codeplex.com/ https://wiki.ciphershed.org/ – Minos Jan 14 '15 at 09:51
  • But he asked (at least it sounded like) for plausible deniability, so he wants to be able to grant somebody access to his machine, but this one could then NOT be able to detect IF there is actually any hidden data. I know TrueCrypt for Windows could provide this feature pretty well as I described above.

    And @MadMike of course he must not forget his pw! If it would be possible to recover the encrypted data (at least without NSA supercomputers) nobody would use it, as he could also an encrypted zip folder. When he wants to automatically mount the volume with his boot pw it also loses its sense!

     – Byte Commander Jan 14 '15 at 12:18
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Is there a software that allows users to have different passwords?

Yes, see How to configure Ubuntu as an LDAP client?.

When you login with one of them you can see all your files, but when you put in the another one, you can only view selected files?

No, never going to be possible. You need 2 users for this with each their own password where user2 only has access to part of the files of user1. This is actually very typical of large organisations where individual users have access only to the information they need on a file server.

To accomplish this you need to set up a data directory (or data partition if you'll be adding more users afterwards) using groups where individual groups have access to certain directories.

If you want to "hide" just one particular directory or a bunch of files from another user (like dad) that has access to your password , just look at this answer: How can I easily encrypt a file?

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Fabby
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    I could do that. but it would not be 100% promising and accurate. You see my "dad" is going to ask me my password and I have to give him a password. and say he is an expert in finding files. And i want him to find nothing other than what I want him to( because of the password he got ). but thanks anyway. – belay neh Jan 14 '15 at 11:24
  • TrueCrypt is still a valid and mature package (thought the single developer has stopped maintaining it). That one can hide things in the free sectors of the hard drive (advanced feature, take backups before installing) and RTFM first! ;-) And the wife will never know... – Fabby Jan 14 '15 at 11:32