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When we lived in Moscow, our PC was stollen from our appartment. There was nothing sensitive there and I do not have anything sensitive on my current computers. But the fact that someone may look into my files, is not very pleasant. Therefore I always use encryption for my files.
On Windows I used TrueCrypt, which is excellent free software. It allows to create encrypted partitions and files, which can be mounted as file system drive (on Windows) or directory (on Linux/Unix/MacOSX).
TrueCrypt version for Mac was released on February 5. Naturally I got it and installed. It can create volumes, mount them, etc. Unfortunately it can format only FAT partitions but I used Mac Disk Utility to reformat mounted partition to HSF+ filesystem and TrueCrypt still recognizes it. So I was quite happy.
Next I found that I cannot mount favorite volumes on system start up in Mac. Windows version has this option and it is very convenient: just mark some volums as favorites, TrueCrypt will ask for password at startup and mount these volumes. So you can have you home directory mounted when you login. But this is not a case for Mac.
I tried to make a login startup item using command line options but this has two nasty proble
- It pops up Terminal window, which stays open regardless of Terminal settings to close window when script finishes
- Password prompt is hidden behind terminal window, which makes extra clicks for me, which is bad usability, which I hate :)
But I can live with these two problems because I relogin very seldom (there is no need to relogin, reboot or shutdown Mac as often as Windows PC).
But the worst problem was that I could not run web server anymore: any symlinks do not work when they are on mounted TrueCrypt volume. They work just fine on normal directory but not on TrueCrypt. To answer guru's advice: yes, I modified Apache confuguration to allow symlinks on that path. It still does not work.
So I decided to try FileVault.
After an hour of encryption I logged in.
Hm, why it is sooooooooooo slooooooooooooooow? Hey, why my desktop is empty? Why Desktop folder lost its icon in Finder? Why Thunderbird prompts me to create e-mail accounts? Why FireFox lost all bookmarks? What the hell is going on?
Answer was found quickly. Normall user's folder is under /Users/user. FileVault created user.-123456789 and Desktop, Finder, Thunderbird and FireFox look in that newly created directory for data. What the hell....? And I still have /Users/user? I went to check what my real user directory is (System Preferences > Accounts, Ctrl-click on my account, Advanced there). It was /Users/user. What the hell...???
Out of curiocity I was able to fix Thunderbird/Firefox by adjusting path to profile but still it all is not right...
I turned off FileVault. Another 40 minutes waiting. Login. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON??? I still have empty desktop. I still have wrong icon in Finder. I still have broken Mozilla applications. Damn.
Now I remembered the anecdote about three travellers, one of whom was a programmer. When their car broke he proposed to exit and enter the car again, may be it will start working ;) So I rebooted my Mac.
Voila! I have everything back! Huray! Why it runs so fast?
Now I need to get rid of that user.-123456789 directory. I am backing it up now (just in case....) and I will remove it and see what happens.
So do not use FileVault. Use something else if you can. I am going to invest some more time on weekends to TrueCrypt. This old good guy never did any bad to me so far...
