Thanks Martin: I too use the command line but not as often as I should.
I hope to make it to one of your meetings. On Aug 17, 2014 11:33 AM, "Martin A. Brown" <mar...@linux-ip.net> wrote: > > > My OS: Mint Linux 16 > > > New member here. I would like to know if there is a command to > > encrypt files? I thought it was "crypt" but I see that is in > > section 3 of the man pages, meaning it's a programming function. > > I'm a command-line monster, so I would reach first for 'gpg'. It's > part of the 'gnupg' package. I had a PDF hanging around in my home > directory, and am using that as an example file below. These two > commands do the same thing, just that one of them allows you to > explicitly name the output file. Regardless of the invocation, you > will be prompted to type the encryption passphrase twice. > > gpg --output W472242.PDF.gpg --symmetric -- W472242.PDF > gpg --symmetric -- W472242.PDF > > Then, to recover your data, you would decrypt as follows. > > gpg --output W472242.PDF.aaa --decrypt -- W472242.PDF.gp > gpg --decrypt -- W472242.PDF.gpg > W472242.PDF.bbb > > And, to verify that the encryption and decryption worked, you can > see that I used the 'md5sum' utility to get a checksum of my data > before and after. > > $ md5sum W472242.PDF* > c787744f66f790efeef893016c4ad587 W472242.PDF > c787744f66f790efeef893016c4ad587 W472242.PDF.aaa > c787744f66f790efeef893016c4ad587 W472242.PDF.bbb > f464112b24fe58c06f5a6f2eab6d7e2a W472242.PDF.gpg > > Note that gpg can also handle public-key cryptography (which > involves key-pairs) in addition to the simpler encryption shown > above. It is called symmetric, because you use the same passphrase > for encryption as for decryption. > > -Martin > > -- > Martin A. Brown > http://linux-ip.net/ > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug