There was discussion back in 2007 of TrueCrypt, and the conclusion was
that the license was non-free, with several major problems.

There is now a BSD-licensed alternative to TrueCrypt called tcplay,
which works with Linux using the device mapper:
https://github.com/bwalex/tc-play

I've sucessfully used it to read and write encrypted NTFS volumes
created with TrueCrypt on Windows 7.

I have submitted a package for review:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=743497

Eric

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Hi Eric,

On 10/06/2011 10:37 AM, Eric Smith wrote:
> There was discussion back in 2007 of TrueCrypt, and the conclusion was
> that the license was non-free, with several major problems.
>
> There is now a BSD-licensed alternative to TrueCrypt called tcplay,
> which works with Linux using the device mapper:
> https://github.com/bwalex/tc-play
>
> I've sucessfully used it to read and write encrypted NTFS volumes
> created with TrueCrypt on Windows 7.
>
Splendid! I've been looking for something like this for a while. Looks
like it's time to create a new DragonFly BSD guest machine and restart
tracking what they're doing too, they have some cool stuff there.

> I have submitted a package for review:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=743497
>
I've posted my review, do take a look when you have time.

Best regards,

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On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 3:37 AM, Eric Smith <eric@brouhaha.com> wrote:
> There was discussion back in 2007 of TrueCrypt, and the conclusion was
> that the license was non-free, with several major problems.

Just an FYI, unless you specifically want to stay away from
problematic licences (i.e. Fedora) but don't have a problem using RPM
Fusion, you can install RealCrypt. It's IS TruCrypt just re-branded.

If I remember correctly it's not that TrueCrypt is non-free, but that
the license is incompatible with Fedora and upstream was not willing
to budge on that so it was re-branded instead.

Richard
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On 10/08/2011 04:17 AM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> On 10/08/2011 12:55 AM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>
>> Is there any reason to use TrueCrypt, over the whole disk encryption
>> that Fedora already provides? LUKS "just works" afaict ...
>
> Does it? It is not easily accessible for a regular end user and is not
> cross platform.

Before this thread end in flame (as almost all discussions on this list :-)

Truecrypt on Linux uses kernel dm-crypt, so it is all mainly about
metadata format handling.

I will probably try to add alternative to cryptsetup
to handle directly Truecrypt format (which is documented on project
page, outside of source), the same way I already added loop-aes support.

For LUKS - it is cross platform, at least on Windows you can map
it using http://freeotfe.org/ and DragonFLy BSD supported it as well.

While I like Truecrypt myself, I would suggest to avoid it in distro
for license problems (as Spot already mentioned).

Milan

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On Sat, 08 Oct 2011 15:11:06 +0200
Milan Broz <mbroz@redhat.com> wrote:

> Before this thread end in flame (as almost all discussions on this
> list :-)
>
> Truecrypt on Linux uses kernel dm-crypt, so it is all mainly about
> metadata format handling.
>
> I will probably try to add alternative to cryptsetup
> to handle directly Truecrypt format (which is documented on project
> page, outside of source), the same way I already added loop-aes
> support.

For those who didn't bother to look at the tcplay site (the subject of
this thread it claims to be re-implemented based on the upstream
docs and a bunch of trial and error (they claim the upstream docs are
wrong or misleading in a number of places).

If it's truely a clean room re-implementation, hopefully it will be
acceptable license wise.

kevin
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Milan Broz wrote:
> Truecrypt on Linux uses kernel dm-crypt, so it is all mainly about
> metadata format handling.
>
> I will probably try to add alternative to cryptsetup
> to handle directly Truecrypt format (which is documented on project
> page, outside of source), the same way I already added loop-aes support.

tcplay also uses dm-crypt. The author found that the Truecrypt format
documentation had a lot of errors; see the tcplay README for details.

It appears that there are provisions for using an API from tcplay from
other programs, but I haven't really examined that.

> While I like Truecrypt myself, I would suggest to avoid it in distro
> for license problems (as Spot already mentioned).

Which is exactly why I'm trying to get the BSD-licensed tcplay into Fedora.

It would be great to also have a way for users to deal with it through
GUI tools, but tcplay does not provide that.

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On 08/10/11 01:15 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
> Milan Broz wrote:
> > Truecrypt on Linux uses kernel dm-crypt, so it is all mainly about
> > metadata format handling.
> >
> > I will probably try to add alternative to cryptsetup
> > to handle directly Truecrypt format (which is documented on project
> > page, outside of source), the same way I already added loop-aes support.
>
> tcplay also uses dm-crypt. The author found that the Truecrypt format
> documentation had a lot of errors; see the tcplay README for details.
>
> It appears that there are provisions for using an API from tcplay from
> other programs, but I haven't really examined that.

Yes, there's an API defined and a test code that one use as an example.

Regards,
Dariusz
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On 10/08/2011 09:15 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
> Milan Broz wrote:
> > Truecrypt on Linux uses kernel dm-crypt, so it is all mainly about
> > metadata format handling.
> >
> > I will probably try to add alternative to cryptsetup
> > to handle directly Truecrypt format (which is documented on project
> > page, outside of source), the same way I already added loop-aes support.
>
> tcplay also uses dm-crypt. The author found that the Truecrypt format
> documentation had a lot of errors; see the tcplay README for details.

Sure, just libcryptsetup is designed to support various formats so
adding Truecrypt container is just logical step.
(and tcplay reimplements a lot of code which cryptsetup already have)

You can of course package tcplay separately as well.

Milan
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