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radek
Asked: 2011-10-21 12:15:16 +0800 CST

Help me understand sizing of encrypted home partition

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I installed 11.10 on my laptop choosing to encrypt home directory.

Now, when I use disk usage analyzer I get this picture:

encrypted

Total fs capacity is reported correctly as 40.1GB. However inside home directory I have mysterious feature of .ecryptfs which appears to have the same size as my home directory.

What exactly does that mean?

11.10

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    .ecryptfs is a special folder where the system stores the encrypted home folder data.

    That data is mounted on each user's home directory, so you can see it decrypted and use it comfortably. Since you're the only user on your system, you see that folder has the same size as your home folder.

    The mounting process is what makes it appear duplicated. Read more here:

    http://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedPrivateDirectory

    Cheers!

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