If you run Linux, you have access to a number of tools to keep the information on your hard drives secure and private. One good option is eMount, a tool that can mount, encrypt, and manage disk image files and physical disk drives. eMount offers an easy-to-use interface to make data available as a user needs it, on demand, making any system more secure.
eMount uses disk image files to set up one big data partition with many virtual disks in it. The program uses cryptsetup with the LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) extension to create and provide access to encrypted partitions with excellent performance. You can mount system partitions and virtual disks from a GUI or the command line. The source can be plain or encrypted, and the list of supported file systems, ciphers, and hash algorithms is operating-system-dependent.
To create a disk image from a GUI, a superuser fills in a form with information such as file name, disk size, file system, and label to identify the device. You can also select cipher and hash algorithms and enter a password or key file. To create an encrypted partition from a physical drive, you select a source, file system, label, and password or key file. To mount a device, you specify a source, which can be a disk image file or a physical partition, plain or encrypted, along with mount point and label.
Italian developer Raimondo Del Gaudio began working on eMount about a year ago after he became frustrated using various scripts to mount and unmount encrypted disk image files using the loop, cryptsetup, and mount commands. The program is written in C++ and uses the wxWidgets libraries. “I chose C++ because it’s fast and because I like it. I have a good knowledge of wxWidgets and I like GNOME – wxWidgets is implemented using GTK under Linux. The library is stable and widely supported. I used wxFormBuilder for creating dialogs and panels – it’s a good open source front end for creating wxWidgets controls. Lately I have begun using the Anjuta IDE, which lets me develop faster by giving me quick access to the files that I need, terminal, build messages, etc.”
Del Gaudio says eMount lets you make disk image files dependent upon others; users can create disk image files containing keys needed to gain access to other virtual disks. “I would recommend users spend time structuring their data so that disk image files can be taken on or off line at any time.”
eMount is still in beta, and Del Gaudio has some improvements already planned. “The program creates disk images by copying random bytes generated by the kernel to a file. This procedure is slow, and needs improvements to become as fast as possible. This includes the capability to resize disks. The copy feature needs queuing functionality, so that users can launch multiple copies to be processed sequentially. Other new features might include Copy to Backup and Copy to Defrag commands to allow users, in the first case, to make a backup of their data into an encrypted disk image file that contains a compressed archive of the original data and, in the second case, to create a new disk image which could be different in size, where data are sequentially copied to avoid defragmentation.”
Del Gaudio is actively developing eMount in his spare time. “I expect to make a new release every month at this stage and then slow down to a release every two or three months. I would appreciate help of any sort: bug reports, feature requests, portability to other Linux distributions, translation, and core development. My email address is the best way to get in touch.”