Recursively encrypt directories with gpgdir

Recently I wrote an article about Encrypting and decrypting files with GnuPG. This article described how to encrypt single files in with the help of gpg. But what happens if you have a directory full of files? Sure you can tar the directory up and encrypt the files  as a single file. But that isn't very practical when you don't want to have to tar and untar a directory all the time. And what if you only want to encrypt certain files within a directory? That is when you need the help of another application.

The application you need is gpgdir. The gpgdir application allows you to recursively encrypt and decrypt directories on your Linux system. It's an easy to use command line tool that can save you a lot of time when you have to do a lot of encryption of files. In this article you will see how to install gpgdir and use it for basic directory encryption/decryption.

Getting and installing

The only drawback is that gpgdir is not installed on your distribution by default, it doesn't come with GnuPG, nor is it included in your repositories. You are going to have to install manually.

If you use an rpm-based distribution you can download the rpm from gpgdir's download page. Once you have that file downloaded you will issue the command:

rpm -ivh gpgdir-XXX.rpm

Where XXX is the release number.

If you are not using an rpm-based distribution you will have to install from source. This is actually quite easy. First download the source file. Once you have that file on your hard drive (let's say it's in ~/Downloads/firefox/) issue the following comands:

cd ~/Downloads/firefox

bunzip2 gpgdir-XXX.tar.bz2

tar -xvf gpgdir-XXX.tar

cd gpgdir-XXX

./install.pl (or sudo ./install.pl)

Where XXX is the release number.

You should now have a working installation of gpgdir.

Using gpgdir

Before you actually run gpgdir you have to have a gpg key generated (The article mentioned at the beginning will describe to you how this is done.) With your gpg key in mind you have to edit a single line in a file before you begin using gpgdir. The file is ~/.gpgdirrc. What you need to do is add your gpg key user name in this file. The line you need to add looks like:

use_key USERNAME

Where USERNAME is your gpg key username (not your Linux system username - although they could be the same). If you're not sure what your gpg key user name is issue the command:

gpg --list-keys

to see the user names of your keys.

Once you have your configuration file edited you are ready to go.

The basic usage of gpgdir is:

gpgdir -e|-d DIRECTORY OPTIONS

Let's create a test directory containing two files. So issue the following commands to create your test environment:

mkdir TEST

echo $USER > TEST/user

data > TEST/data

Now you are ready to see how this works. Let's encrypt the files in our TEST directory.

gpgdir -e TEST

You will be prompted to enter the key's passphrase. Once you do this you will see something like:

[+] Encrypting files in directory: /home/jlwallen/TEST
[+] Building file list...
[+] Encrypting:  /home/jlwallen/TEST/user
[+] Encrypting:  /home/jlwallen/TEST/date
[+] Total number of files encrypted: 2

If you look in the TEST directory you will now see the following:

date.gpg

user.gpg

To unencrypt these files issue the following command:

gpgdir -d TEST

You will be prompted for the password again. After gpgdir decrypts the files they will no longer be encrypted.

Excluding files

Say you want to encrypt all files in the TEST directory but the user file. To do this you would issue the command:

gpgdir -e TEST --Exclude user

All files in TEST, except user, will now be encrypted.

Final thoughts

Although you can do more with gpgdir, you now have the fundamental usage of the command.

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