File Vault on HOme Directory with encrypted disk image in it

I want to try File Vault. My question is as follows: I have an encrypted disk image already in my home folder. It is a small 500 MB one. Can I keep that in there, as is, without problems, or is File Vault going to encrypt and encrypted image and cause some sort of problem?
Has anyone done this without issues?
I know the alternative is to unencrypt my current image and let File Vault handle the encryption, but I am curious about leaving it alone and trying File Vault.
Thanks for any help,
x-.-x

x-.-x wrote:
I want to try File Vault.
Good luck!
File Vault going to encrypt and encrypted image and cause some sort of problem?
FileVault is no more likely to scramble an encrypted disk image than it is to scramble the rest of your files. However, it is quite likely that it will scramble all of your files.
Has anyone done this without issues?
I have read many postings here in the discussion forums by people who have used FileVault and lost all of their data. Your mileage may vary. The only way I would use FileVault would be if I had an unencrypted copy of everything somewhere safe. Like you, I keep a small encrypted disk image for particularly sensitive files.

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Does it work with encrypted disk images?

Hallo,
I have a 10 GB fixed size image on my account and it is encrypted. It uses about 4,8 GB on the disk.
I would like to know if time machine is able to detect when changes are made inside such disk image,
if yes, if it is able to add just modified data or if it will copy all 4,8 GB file every time backup is made.
Thanks

If it is a standard encrypted disk image, Time Machine will copy the whole 4.8 GB every time.
But you can convert your disk image to a "SparseBundle" with this Terminal command:
hdiutil convert -format UDSB -imagekey sparse-band-size=32768 -encryption -o ~/Desktop/newimagename /path/to/olddisk_imagename (make sure that is all on one line)
That will copy your old disk image to a new one on the Desktop. A sparsebundle looks and behaves the same way as a regular .dmg. But the sparsebundle is actually a package that contains all of its data in 16MB bands. With any luck, your data changes will clump together in a few of these bands, and Time Machine will copy only those bands over rather than the whole shebang.

Password no longer works with encrypted disk image.

I have an encrypted disk image on my macbook pro. I enter the password every time I open the disk image. Last week it stopped accepting the password. I checked in keychain where I'd saved the PW when first creating the disk image and verified I was entering what was saved there. It matched what I've been entering but still no luck. I attenpted to pull an old version of the disk image from time machine and that still won't open with what I know is the password I've always used.
Any tips?

try doing SMC reset the following article tells how to do that:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
after doing this reset try again to enter the password for the disk image, if it still doesn't work there is no way to bypass the passcode on the disk. the following article talk about filevault:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH3683

Trouble with encryted disk image

OK.. here it goes. I'll start with expected "I'm new to Macs". I recently purchased my first Mac. Its an iMac running Snow Leopard 10.6.2. In the interest of securing my personal files I wanted to create an encrypted disk image to store them. So I opened up Disk Utility and with Macintosh HD highlighted in the left column I selected the "New Image" button. I think that was my first mistake, selecting the "New Image" button when Macintosh HD was highlighted because the resulting dialog only offered me Save As, Image Format and Encryption. It did not offer me Size, Format or Partitions. I selected to save the image as "Vault" in my Documents directory, and I chose compressed and 128 bit encryption.
Next I hit create and entered my administrator password and provided a password for encryption. It started chugging along and I noticed it was reading my entire Macintosh HD. The process took a good while. Finally it completed and as a result there was a (roughly) 150 GB .dmg image in my documents directory with the name I provided (Vault.dmg). FYI.. I had about 150GB of data on my HD when I started this little adventure.
Moving right along, when I tried to mount the disk I get an error saying "..(no mountable file systems". Here is the log output from disk utility:
===== Saturday, February 6, 2010 7:34:24 AM MST =====
2010-02-06 07:34:26 -0700: Attach Image “Vault.dmg”
2010-02-06 07:34:26 -0700: Initializing…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Verifying…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Verification completed…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: expected CRC32 $31E027DA
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Attaching…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Mounting…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Attaching…
2010-02-06 07:34:28 -0700: Finishing…
2010-02-06 07:34:29 -0700: Unable to attach “Vault.dmg.” (no mountable file systems)
2010-02-06 07:34:29 -0700:
FYI.. after I tried to mount the disk image via the disk utility I see a ghosted "Macintosh HD" appear under my Vault.dmg. To make matter worse I can't erase either of these because everything on the Erase tab is disabled (grayed out). So at this point I'm pretty sure I created a compressed disk image that has a copy of all my data which is not what I wanted.
At this point I just want to erase this ridiculously large and unmountable disk image, and start over. Can any of you fine people help me?
Thanks.
Message was edited by: docdee24

Some systems will auto open. With my settings, I right click and mount the disc image, then play. When I'm finished, I eject the "disc." If you're not ejecting the mounted image, perhaps the Mac is confused about which disc to play.
John

Problems with ecrypted disk image

I'm trying to restore my laptop (Titanium DVI) from an encrypted disk image, and am having no luck. I have my laptop in target disk mode hooked up to a Mac Pro with the backup disk image.
When I use Disk Utility and attempt a restore, it prompts me for the disk image password, and it starts copying (and apparently succeeds in copying some items). But then after only a few seconds, it prompts me for the disk image password again, and I enter it again, and then I get an error 2, no such file or directory and it dies. After this subsequent attempts without rebooting result in error 16, Resource busy. Finder shows no disks mounted, but a ls of /Volumes shows that there are in fact copies mounted there. unmounting them from the command line does not clear the resource busy problem, but rebooting does.
I thought maybe the encryption is confusing things -- support for this seems sketchy. There seems to be no provision with command-line asr to deal with encrypted disk images. Also, hdiutil can do some things, but for instance I can't use convert to read the old disk image and create a new one, because it tries to apply the -stdinpass option to the new image, not the old one. I'd like to try making an unencrypted image to see if that is causing the problem.
edited to add that I'm doing an erase restore.
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You choice. Since the immediate problem's was solved, you might want to start a new thread on the diskutil issue in the Unix forum: http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=735 and start a new one in the Using Mac OS X Tiger forum on any Disk Utility issues.

My Automator script to backup files to encrypted disk image

Hi there. I have a question regarding Automator and Encrypted disk images. I've put together a workflow that grabs files in my home folder. My home folder is utilizing FileVault. I'm grabbing things like my iphoto library, documents folder and such. On an external usb drive I've created an encrypted disk image about 100GB. My goal is for the automator action to "successfully" mount > copy > unmount the encrypted image.
As of right now, the script works, but gives an error at the end of the copy, not allowing a successful unmount of the dmg. Is there something I'm doing wrong? I browsed through all the files after copying and they are all there, the folder sizes match up 100%.
I guess I could just use a program that does this, but, I find it much easier clicking on a shortcut in my dock to run the script and go away for 10 - 15 mins.
If it would help to view the script, let me know and we'll work something out.
Thanks

The popup box says:
The action "Copy Finder Items" encountered an error. Check the action's properties and try running the workflow again.
And the Automator workflow log says:
Can't read directory contents: /Volumes/Backup
But as I said, clearly it works and reads/writes to the encrypted dmg because all the files are there. What I do is just select all the folders inside the drive first, and delete/empty the trash first before running the action. This is the second step once I know this is working. So that I don't have to manually delete them everytime before running the script.
So to answer your question, the drive is empty, and the dmg is empty, allowable for a maximum 100GB of storage.
I think it might be something to do with copying files to an encrypted disk image, but, I can't find any help anywhere on this.
Thanks

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Preserving the file permissions
I have used rsync and ditto commands to copy the file. Does rsync preserve the permissions like the ditto command?
Updating the System to use the new home directory
I have used the Ctl-Click on the accounts control panel to update the location of the home directories. Do applications use "~<username>" or /Users/<username> to find the home directory of the user (obviously this is limited to Apple Controlled software).
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I disagree with Linc Davis on whether to move the home folder, But I think you are going about it the wrong way.
Having a Boot drive with only System, Library, Applications, and the hidden unix directories including Paging/Swap on it is one of the best ways to speed up routine disk Access for all your other files. The system keeps "snacking" away loading and reloading bits and pieces of System and Applications as you work, and that System activity slows "regular" disk access way down by moving the drive heads away from the files you are processing.
Giving System files their own drive speeds up everything.
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http://chris.pirillo.com/how-to-move-the-home-folder-in-os-x-and-why/
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Can not log in due to file vault-protected home folder error

I´m posting this for a friend... apparently his kids were playing with the machine and now he can´t log in... this is what he gets:
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Hi Aaron, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), if it logs him in, run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
If perchance you can't find your install Disc, at least try it from the Safe Boot part onward.

Alias to open a file in an encrypted disk image

Deleted.

There is a quick and simple test, could someone with Lion installed be so kind as to do this:
1. Use Disk Utility (or Knox if they own the app) to create an encrypted disk image on the Desktop called Test
2. Mount the image, open TextEdit and paste a page of text into the window, then save the file in the mounted disk image
3. Paste another page of text into the TextEdit window
Open Terminal, navigate to /Volumes/Test, view the hidden files in the directory & post the results here.
All you need to do to clean up is eject the disk image then drag the .sparsebundle file to the Trash.
Cheers

Encrypted disk image with recovery key

I am trying to create an encrypted disk image that can also be recovered with the use of a key. It is basically trying to do what FileVault does where you have a password to get in, but there is a Master password that can recover the image if you forget/lose your password. I have pieced the basic concepts together, but it isn't working. First I create the certificates that I believe I need with a keychain using the certtool command.
certtool y c k=SecureKey.keychain
certtool c k=~/Library/Keychains/SecureKey.keychain o= SecureKey.cer
I went with the RSA 1024 bit and SHA-1 stuff (that is the technically term for it).
After that, I tried creating the image. I am in the same directory that the SecureKey.cer file is in, so that shouldn't be an issue. Also if it can't find the certificate, it tells you that. Here is the command I used.
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Hi Robert,
> Once you through a sudo in there, you lose the option
to have a regular user
   That's not really true. Sudo is one of the most flexible commands around and not only can a regular user use it but they can use it without a password. Mind you I'm not suggesting that you make all users admins; you can specify both of these privileges for this command only. All you have to do is to put a line like the following in your /etc/sudoers file. (with sudo visudo of course)
ALL ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/hdiutil create -encryption -certificate*-stdinpass -type SPARSE -fs "HFS+" -volname-size
I've included wildcards so that the cert file, volume name, size and image are arbitrary but the others must be in the user's command to qualify. I realize that you'll want different options to use FileVault certs but I don't know how to do that so I used your original example as my example.
   Of course it wouldn't be that easy for your lusers to get all of those options correct so the next thing you do is to wrap the command, with it's sudo preface, in a shell script that parses the cert file, volume name, size and image from the options the user passes to the script and puts those into the command with the right syntax. If you want to get really fancy, the script could prompt the user for any arguments that were omitted. Your lusers will think that you created this really cool command and never know that sudo was involved.
Gary
~~~~
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Greetings Apple Hivemind:
I've run across a repeatable problem when using encrypted disk images from Disk Utility. Essentially, I'll create an image using settings like are shown below:
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My first incident was where Lightroom informed me that the catalog it was trying to open was corrupted. I tried to create a new one on the same encrypted volume, and it too was instantly flagged as corrupted. I opened the individual image files on the volume with no problem, so I wasn't thinking that the volume was the culprit. That is, until I tried dragging new image files to it manually. The new files were immediately either completely unreadable, or a mish-mash of the content of random OTHER files on the volume!
The result was that all old data seemed intact, but I could no longer write new data to the volumes without major data corruption issues. I thought that this was isolated to one volume in particular, but it soon started happening on ALL of my encrypted volumes eventually. Including those which were not, and never had been, housed on my NAS, but were on my local hard drives.
I've since "evacuated" all my data from these images, since the ones created by Disk Utility appear to be useless, and am seeking an alternative.
Is this something that anyone else has encountered when using encrypted disk images? It seems like this is something I should really open a support ticket for, but I can't say I've ever tried it, so I don't know how successful it would be to do so.

bbonn wrote:
I should add that I've tried using the "Repair" and "Verify" functions of Disk Utility on the volumes, and despite the obvious issues that exist in them, the utility doesn't find (or fix) any inconsistencies.
Are you repairing/verifying the actual disk images, or just the partition they're on? If the partition, it won't look inside them.
Drag one to Disk Utility's sidebar, select it, then use Verify or Repair. Note: the usual messages may not appear on the DU window. Click the Log icon in the toolbar or select Window > Show Log from the menubar to see them.

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File Vault on HOme Directory with encrypted disk image in it

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