openSUSE 11 & TrueCrypt 6.0a: ReadOnly-containers only :(

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1

I am using TrueCrypt on all of my USB-Sticks and external harddisks. Today I installed TrueCrypt 6.0a on my openSUSE 11 box too.

Now when I start TrueCrypt and open an encrypted USB stick (whole stick is encrpyted so I choose the proper device before decrypt it) it is always ReadOnly.

I checked the Settings in TrueCrpyt but the box for ‘mounting as ReadOnly’ is not ticked.

So I tried it as root, but again I could not write anything to the stick. So I checked the permissions and tried to change them:

ACME-N01:/media # ls -al
total 12
...]
-rw-------  1 root root    0 Oct 27 00:34 .hal-mtab-lock
dr-x------  1 root root 4096 Oct 21 14:58 truecrypt2
ACME-N01:/media # chmod 700 truecrypt2/
chmod: changing permissions of `truecrypt2/': Read-only file system

What is wrong and how can I get it working?

This is a dualboot Notebook and my Problem is, that I do not have and option to write on USB-Devices from my Linux installation at the moment. I tried it with a not encrypted partition too, but again writing fails - maybe because the filesystem has been formated in NTFS and that’s probably the reason why I could not write anything on the local Windows-Partitions too. Because of this I thought using my encrypted disks might by an easy way to work around, but doesn’t work as described before :frowning:

2

OK, I found the reason for the read-only filesystem:
The stick and all of my containerfiles have been formatted in NTFS and that is the reason why I can not write or edit those tc-archives.

My workaround will be the following:
I will copy all the file of an encrypted device/archive on a local disc. Then I can delete the encrypted device/archive and rebuild a new one usint FAT32 as filesystem as it is accessible from Linux and Windows. After that I will move the files back to the newly generated ancrypted device/archive. To be sure that those files a moved seucre I reccomend the use of the Windows freeware Eraser.

Thanks and HTH :wink:

3

Just to make it clear: I am talking of the filesystem that can be choosen in TrueCrypt while creating a new container-file or encrypting a whole device.

I haven’t tested it but I guess when having a container file formatted in FAT (I am not sure if FAT32 is available in TrueCrypt)) that is stored on a NTFS-volume it should be possible to write in the container when it is mounted by TrueCrypt as it will be handled as a regular new volume.