Re: Unison and Gocryptfs on FreeBSD

Lluc Pallejà <[email protected]> writes:

> This is not strictly a Unison "issue" but rather finding an
> alternative of my current setup to use Unison and some sort of Fuse
> alternative with FreeBSD. Let me explain.

Very interesting and IMHO totally appropriate for this list.

> My current setup is, one PC with Debian Bookworm, a Mac mini and a
> Macbook Pro. All three computers I have installed Unison (latest
> version) and Gocryptfs, which I use to have an encrypted folder with
> the option of -plaintextnames so everything is encrypted except the
> filenames, that way I can see what files will be synchronized and what
> direction. Then I synchronized my files with Unison to a private
> server which acts as a central point.
>
> So no matter which computer I use, I have a copy of all my files on
> every computer including the server. I've been using this setup for
> the last 6 years and it's been working really great.

Just to be clear, you are synchronizing the ciphertext files with
Unison.

> A few weeks ago I gave a FreeBSD a try and I liked it very much, all
> my software is also available on FreeBSD with the exception of
> Gocryptfs which is not supported or available on FreeBSD
>
> Since I totally rely on Gocryptfs I looked for other options such as
> CryFS or encryptFS but they neither of them have the option to NOT
> encrypt the file names, so that's a no go.
>
> I don't think there is a solution to my particular setup.. I have
> looked very hard and even try to use Gocryptfs with the Linux binary
> support on FreeBSD, but since Gocryptfs relies on
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/hanwen/go-fuse__;!!IBzWLUs!W8EAF-mQvO-FM8_YUxa_mZcNFiOdcq5a3KNAyoAXxIw_ZEitmk9M1wZ1GXJf9YXFnpWxYCHhfw1UzfvBRzv8MCOlnOQzjwYJZw$
> library it doesn't really work.

I wonder if gocryptfs is fundamentally nonportable, or if there is just
a missing piece.   encfs seems to have some awkwardness with it.

> So, since some of you I think are using BSDs with Unison I just wonder
> if anyone has an idea or solution to my problem. I used gocryptfs
> because has support for macos and Linux, but I would love to use
> FreeBSD.

My suggestions are:

  port gocryptfs

  find some other encryption tool, and instead of synchronizing
  ciphertext, synchronize the plaintext mounts

  find some other tool, and just synchronize the ciphertext, deciding
  not to worry

I hope you choose option 1 so I can use gocryptfs on NetBSD.

Also, a caution that if you store bits encrypted, you need a 20-year
plan to be able to build the software to decrypt and get at them.
Migration is hard and I've been dealing with encrypted bits for 30
years.

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