Additional, encrypted partition mounted as /Users

Recently I removed DVD-ROM drive from my MacBook Pro and installed 60GB SSD for system (in regular HDD bay) and my old HDD instead of DVD drive.
My plan is to use fast SSD drive for system and the HDD for data.
I would like to have my HDD partition mounted as /Users so all users' home directories are stored on HDD.
I read this article: http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/1935/lions-whole-disk-encryption but it seams there is a problem with logging in if the user's home directory resides on separate encrypted partition.
My question is:
Is there any chance I can have "fully functional" /Users directory mounted as additional encrypted partition?
Thanks,
Mike

Hi Linc,
Thanks for your answer.
No, because the Users volume would already have to be unlocked and mounted before you could log in, and that's impossible.
I don't think it is impossible. I would reather say: "Apple makes it difficult to do".
I barely see any problem with mounting other partitions on the system level during boot.
The question is: "How hard is it to do that now?"
The second question is: "When (and how) Apple will make it easier?"
The best you could do would be to log in, mount the volume as root at /Users, then log out and log in again. I wouldn't recommend that you try this.
Yeah... I don't feel like log in two times. I wouldn't recommend it either.
I have another idea which is:
1. Mount addtitional encrypted partition as /Volumes/Whatever
2. Create directories like:
/Volumes/Whatever/Documents
/Volumes/Whatever/Pictures
/Volumes/Whatever/Music
/Volumes/Whatever/Library
3. Mount these directories in places under /Users/MyUser/... during login.
So there are other questions:
1. How to do it the "Mac way"?
2. There are maybe some directories which probably can not be mounted this way as its content can be necessary for login process to perform (probably some subdirectories of Library). Is it the case?
Cheers,
Mike

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How to mount encrypted partition

I have Archlinux installed in dual boot with Ubuntu. My home partition on Ubuntu is encrypted with ecrypt. I would like to have this partition mounted on boot at Archlinux too. Does anyone can help me how to do that?
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https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … h_eCryptfs
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Last edited by skx (2009-02-16 15:36:33)

quarkup wrote:ii)
a) No problemo. I use nVidia drivers too for my 6800go, with no issues.
Inxsible wrote:ii c) [....] I think there are packages in AUR, which can help you convert them to an Arch PKGBUILD and then install them.
Thanks.
bgc1954 wrote:i)
Well, if you used suse for any length of time, you might miss the incredible slowness of yast as compared to pacman. :D
YaST is not that slow anymore ;)
What about the encryption part? That's the one that makes me anxious.
Last edited by skx (2009-02-16 15:50:58)

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hi
i have an encrypted partition use by suse
is there a way to use it with arch linux?
thanks

Generally you would use the same method you (or suse) uses to mount and unlock the encrypted partition.
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mount /dev/mapper/name_of_partition /partition_mountpoint
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yes you can, but I would advise against doing so.
The purpose is usually to use another disk drive to improve performance. Using a partition on the same drive just adds longer seeks from head movement instead.
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Hello.
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solstice wrote:
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Hi,
This is my first experience with Arch, with GPT, with LUKS, and with gummiboot, so I have a lot of sources of ignorance.
I am trying to set up a LUKS-encrypted system with encrypted swap. I have followed the beginner's guide and the dm-crypt with LUKS guide pretty carefully and have no problem creating the encrypted partitions. However, I don't quite understand how to construct the gummiboot entry for booting into the system.
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what is with the escaped windows-looking backslashes -- shouldn't this read more like:
title Arch Linux (Encrypted)
linux /vmlinuz-linux
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Matt

Mount -o users doesn't work as intended, why not?

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And it mounts usb sticks just fine. Problem is, I still get a permission denied error when trying to unmount them, despite using the "users" mount option, which is supposed to let *any* user unmount the device.
So I tried mounting the stick manually with the users option...
# mount -o users /dev/sdb /mnt
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Last edited by Gullible Jones (2011-01-07 23:37:01)

Thanks... Kind of strange, that. Is there a way to use pmount and give unmount permissions for all users, so that I don't have to do the silly mount-as-a-specific-user thing?
Edit: Oh N/M, just unmounting with pumount works great. Thanks!
Last edited by Gullible Jones (2011-01-08 00:24:58)

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who knows what is the encryption method for the user's password?
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[Solved]Mount windows encrypted partition

Hi,
I have encrypted the Windows 7 system partition fully using truecrypt. In Linux when i try to mount that partition [/dev/sda1] it says "incorrect password of not a truecrypt partition". I am entering the same password which I use while booting into Windows, that is pre-boot password.:/
Last edited by sHyLoCk (2010-06-15 14:12:53)

Do you use the same truecrypt version on windows and linux? also to be able to mount encrypted systems you have to activate a separate checkbox telling that the partition is using system encryption in truecrypts mount dialog (don't know where exactly it is since I didn't use truecrypt in a while), otherwise it will show the error you mentioned.

[SOLVED] mounting a plain dm-crypt encrypted partition

After I botched an upgrade today, I'd like to save some stuff from an encrypted /home partition and start over. I'm trying to mount the partition from a LiveCD and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.
[root@archiso ~]# cryptsetup create home /dev/sda3
Enter passphrase:
[root@archiso ~]# mount /dev/mapper/home /media/home
[ 215.550259] SQUASHFS error: Can't find a SQUASHFS superblock on dm-3
[ 215.566713] EXT4-fs (dm-3): unable to read superblock
[ 215.580030] EXT2-fs (dm-3): error: unable to read superblock
I don't think there's anything wrong with the partition, it was working fine earlier today, and from what I've read I think I'm trying to unlock and mount it correctly. The only similar post I could find was this, but couldn't find any older install media to test with aside from dead torrents and I'm not sure what version of dm-crypt was used to create the partition.
Last edited by bnjw (2011-12-29 10:26:11)

It's ext3, and I think I did use LUKS after all. It looks like I just had the wrong drive name, after running blkid /dev/sda3 wasn't even listed, but /dev/sda9 matched it in capacity. Using that instead I was able to cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda9 home and mount /dev/mapper/home /media/home worked fine afterward. I have no idea what I was doing when I made this setup, but I'll pay attention when doing it this time (and not wait 6 months to -Syu and break everything).
Thanks to both of you for the help.

Additional, encrypted partition mounted as /Users

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