tools:encrypt files when tar them

https://superuser.com/questions/370389/how-do-i-password-protect-a-tgz-file-with-tar-in-unix

 

2028  tar zcvpf - demo_bak/ |ccrypt > demo_bak.tar.tgz.cpt
 2029  ls
 2030  mkdir test
 2031  mv demo_bak.tar.tgz.cpt test/
 2032  ls
 2033  cd test/
 2034  ls
 2035  tar -zxvpf demo_bak.tar.tgz.cpt
 2036  man ccrypt 
 2037  ccrypt -d demo_bak.tar.tgz.cpt 
 2038  ls
 2039  tar -zxvpf demo_bak.tar.tgz 
 2040  ls
 2041  history -30
 2042  history |tail -30

 

 

 

 

How do I password protect a .tgz file with tar in Unix?

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I'm using the Unix tar command as follows to tar up a directory and its files:

tar cvzf fileToTar.tgz directoryToTar

Is there a way to password protect the .tgz file? I've created password-protected ZIP files on Windows so I would assume Unix has the same capability. Any ideas?

linux unix tar archiving password-protection

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edited Mar 18 '14 at 14:39

vdd

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asked Dec 21 '11 at 19:00

c12

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Dec 21 '11 at 21:00

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5 Answers

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37

 

Use crypt or gpg on the file.

Simple examples:

cat filename | crypt > filename.crypt

gpg -c –o filename.gpg filename

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edited Oct 13 '16 at 8:12

 

Tanky Woo

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answered Dec 21 '11 at 19:08

Christopher Neylan

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• 2

  this makes no sense, where is the password? – Alexander Mills May 7 at 19:27

• 2

  @AlexanderMills Most password-accepting tools prompt the user for it from the terminal rather than a command line argument, as to prevent the password showing up in history. – Daffy May 26 at 3:52

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33

 

You can use command:

zip -P password file.zip file

Or better:

zip -e file.zip file

man zip

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edited Jun 20 '12 at 8:14

mtk

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answered Dec 22 '11 at 6:27

Panta

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16

 

Neither the tar format nor the gz format has built-in support for password-protecting files.

The Windows zip format combines several different piece of functionality: compression (e.g. gzip), archiving multiple files into one (e.g. tar), encryption (e.g. gnupg), and probably others. Unix tends to have individual tools, each of which does one thing well, and lets you combine them.

The Unix equivalent of a password-protected .zip file would probably be called something like foo.tar.gz.gpg or foo.tgz.gpg.

And there are open-source zip and unzip tools for Unix, though they may not provide all the capabilities of the Windows versions (I'm fairly sure the newer .zipx format isn't supported).

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edited Dec 21 '11 at 22:21

 

Chris W. Rea

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answered Dec 21 '11 at 21:44

Keith Thompson

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12

 

You can use gpg (=GnuPG):

gpg -o fileToTar.tgz.gpg --symmetric fileToTar.tgz

This will prompt you for a passphrase.

To decrypt the file later on, just do a:

gpg fileToTar.tgz.gpg

This will prompt you, again, for the passphrase.

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answered Jul 20 '15 at 5:57

thiagowfx

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• Note: -c is short for --symmetric, i.e., use the default symmetric cipher, which means that the same passphrase is used for both encryption and decryption. (As opposed to asymmetric, which involves public keys and private keys.) – Evgeni Sergeev Nov 24 '17 at 5:30

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7

 

You can use ccrypt.

Things can be encrypted by a pipe:

tar cvvjf - /path/to/files | ccrypt > backup.tar.bz2.cpt

Or in place:

ccrypt backup.tar.bz2

For automating, you can save a passkey into a file and use this passkey to encrypt:

ccrypt -k ~/.passkey backup.tar.bz2

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