Sharing TrueCrypt partition between Windows and Ubuntu

Question

I want to install dual boot with Windows and Ubuntu (Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 in this case) both sharing one partition for data with TrueCrypt. Is that possible? Would that work well?

My plan would be for the TrueCrypt partition to be the home partition in Ubuntu, and the D: disk in Windows. Is there a better scheme? Do you have any tips or know of any tutorials for it?

Solution 1

Since its a dual-boot with one OS accessing the partition at a time,
TrueCrypt should have no problems.

All you need is, to isolate the data partition and encrypt it as a volume (rather than the files in it).
Your idea of a D: drive for Windows will work well with a mountable partition for Ubuntu.

After that you need to get the platform specific TrueCrypt binaries on Windows and Ubuntu.

Whichever OS you boot into, just mount the encrypted volume and you are good to go.

This will work and is easy because,

1. TrueCrypt is available across platforms
   • You are dual-booting and not even sharing the partition simultaniously with Win/Ubuntu
   • If you were sharing, it would typically be over network (and the host OS would mount it)
   • You do not seem to be oriented towards trying to encrypt the boot partitions
   • which can also be done (independently for each OS, if you so desire)

I do this regularly with a removable USB drive.

Solution 2

It supports ext2/3 and just set the inode on the partition to inode 128

sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sda# | grep Inode
sudo mke2fs -I 128 -j -t ext3 /dev/sda#    ------    or ext2 

where # is the partition number

Solution 3

This article talks about what you want: 'Partitioning Windows and Ubuntu'

Comments

[nik]

You could use FAT32 or NTFS. Its not really a big problem since you can re-format later if you find the volume is not accessible on one of your systems. Meanwhile, Win2fs (win2fs.sourceforge.net) will let you access Ext2 in Windows. I think there are more solutions these days.

[Kurru]

I'm picking up this answer as it gets closer, but I may add that none of the ext2 drivers for Windows can work on a TrueCrypted ext3 partition.

[nik]

@Joakim, for the record, can you state which filesystem you have used finally?