Simple encrypted Linux folders with TAR and GPG¶
What’s the simplest way of encrypting a folder in Linux?
Combining tar with gpg, it seems.
Let’s say you have some files in a folder called secret_files.
To encrypt them you can run:
tar cvzf - secret_files/ | gpg -c > secret_files.tar.gz.gpg
This creates a compressed (with gzip) TAR archive [1] of your files, which is then symmetrically encrypted by GPG. I advise to create and store the passphrase you’ll be asked for with a password manager like KeePassXC.
To decrypt the files run:
gpg -d secret_files.tar.gz.gpg | tar xvzf -
What do you need this for?¶
You can use that for whatever you need encrypted files for :)
This isn’t a trick that I’ll start using often, but it may come in handy on some occasions,
like sending private files through third parties, when I don’t even want the file names to leak.
Password-protected ZIPs still present the filenames for example (see unzip -l password_protected.zip).
Sources¶
Just for the record, these are the URLs I got (and used) when I was “researching” [2] the topic of encrypting folders on Linux:
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-create-compressed-encrypted-archives-with-tar-and-gpg
https://superuser.com/questions/370389/how-do-i-password-protect-a-tgz-file-with-tar-in-unix
Footnotes
