cryptmount - a utility for accessing Linux encrypted filesystems

cryptmount command-line screenshot cryptmount is a utility for GNU/Linux operating systems which allows an ordinary user to mount an encrypted filing system without requiring superuser privileges. It can operate on LUKS volumes created by cryptsetup.

The device-mapper technologies offered by the Linux kernel provide many options for creating encrypted filesystems, but require a number of steps before an encrypted filing system can actually be mounted and made available in user-space. These steps are typically not supported directly by the 'mount' or 'pmount' commands, nor does the syntax of /etc/fstab lend itself to describing all the necessary filesystem parameters. This is especially so if the filesystem is stored in an ordinary file, which would require separate configuration of a loopback device and a devmapper target before the filesystem could be accessed.

cryptmount was created to make it as easy for ordinary users to access encrypted filesystems on-demand using the modern devmapper mechansism as it was to use the older, now deprecated, cryptoloop methods. As well as acting as a front-end to LUKS (cryptsetup) encrypted containers, it offers the following options:

There are a number of different ways of accessing encrypted filesystems under Linux, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Some of the closest alternatives to cryptmount are as follows:

cryptmount is currently available within a variety of Linux distributions, including:

The development history is hosted on GitHub, and source packages can also be found on Sourceforge.

The manual pages of cryptmount-6.2.0 for the executable and its configuration file are also available online.

The author would welcome constructive feedback on this webpage or on cryptmount itself. These can be sent to rwpenney«AT»users«DOT»sourceforge«DOT»net .


Last updated 21 January 2023
© Copyright RW Penney, 2006-2023