MEPIS Community Forum

Hi,

Before downloading and installing Mepis, will the program Truecrypt work OK? It seems a weakness with Debian OS.

Regards,

Dyfi.

It is reported to run perfectly on Debian Squeeze, so should be fine in MEPIS 11. Not sure about MEPIS 8.5, but somebody here probably knows.

Older versions of MEPIS have been able to use it. I would bet that it would work now also. Look here for the old howto: http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php?title=Truecrypt

I haven't been able to get it to work on sm8.5-64 bit but it does work perfectly on the same computer running openSUSE 11.3-64.

This (truecrypt) is something I've been meaning to do for some time now. So I tried it... Here is Quick and Dirty report of what I just found on MEPIS 8.5 64 Bit with TrueCrypt 7.0a:

I could download and install, but only if I ran the installer as root. (If ran as user, the installer wouldn't accept the root password - user is not in the sudoers file.)

To run TrueCrypt, I have to start it as root (ALT-F2 >>> kdesu /usr/bin/truecrypt )
(Again, if ran as user, it wouldn't accept the root password - user is not in the sudoers file).

I was able to create, mount and put files in and out of the encrypted partition.

I'll add what I did to the wiki, but maybe the root vs user isn't the way it was supposed to go ? I'm not sure and I'm outta time for now.

Cheers

Your experience mimics exactly what I found with TrueCrypt on MEPIS 8 (32) when I tried it a while back.

I also managed to create a 15GB "container" in /mnt, instead of actually on the USB stick I wanted encrypted! This filled up my / partition almost completely, and caused some bewilderment until I realised what had happened.

Chris

You need to set up the /etc/sudoers file in order to use programs like TrueCrypt that demand sudo. The easiest secure way to do this is to add an entry to allow your user to run just the one command you need to.

There is a program called visudo for modifying /etc/sudoers which checks for syntax errors and should be used whenever editing that file.

Open a Konsole

Edit the file to read like so:

Where you replace "myusername" with your username and "/path/to/truecrypt" with its actual location (I don't have it installed, so I don't know where it gets put).
In visudo, <ctrl>+o saves and <ctrl>+x exits. When you exit, syntax is checked. If you've made any errors they are described, then you are asked "What now?" Press e to continue editing or ? for other options.

When you are done, then sudo should work for that purpose.

Alternatively, you can set sudo up to allow your user to run any command on your machine by using the lineinstead of using the path to that one file. But if you're bothering to run truecrypt in the first place do you want to open that security hole if someone gets your user password?

Good explanation, Tim! I will put this in the Wiki for general use.

Done (plz review):
http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php?title=Sudo

Looks good from here.

Did you add to the TrueCrypt page in the Wiki? It's been a good while since I've been on that page and it seems more comprehensive than it was.

I can see where doing this is definitely needed on a multiple user system. But on a single user system is there any harm/risks by not messing with the sudoers file, and just installing and running truecrypt as root?

Cheers