encrypting a home folder

[happybunny]

This is half a how-I-did-it and half a question.

using encfs it is quite easy to encrypt a folder on your system.

A few pre-requisites:

you must have fuse installed and the user who wants to create an encrypted folder must be in the fuse group, as well as having the fuse module running.

On debian, all I had to do was apt-get install fuse, add the user to the fuse group, then modprobe the fuse module (or edit /etc/modules and have fuse loaded at boot).

Once the above is squared away simply:

$ encfs /folder/encrypted /folder/decrypted

This will prompt to create these folders for you, then ask for an "x"pert config or a "p"re-configured mode, then finally a password to mount the folder with.

You simply access /folder/decrypted as you would any other filesystem, but things are magically encrypted.


To unmount this folder:

$ fusermount -u /folder/encrypted

To re-mount the folder just $ encfs /folder/encrypted /folder/decrypted and enter the original password.



Now, onto the question:

i set this up so that my users home folder is an encrypted one.

I boot up, log in, mount the encrypted folder.

BUT, when I startx or login via gdm, I cannot log in as the system does not have access to my encrypted home folder and thus fails to start X or let me log in.

Is there a way I can encrypt my home folder but still use X?

Basically I want everything i do encrypted....chat...irc....web...documents.... I know i can redirect all these app's to use my encrypted folder, but if I encrypt my ~, everything will just be safe.

Thanks