Quick configuration advice
==========================

The configuration script will automatically find and make use of your installed
'gettext' package.

Using This Package
==================

As a user, if your language has been installed for this package, you
only have to set the `LANG' environment variable to the appropriate
`LL_CC' combination.  Here `LL' is an ISO 639 two-letter language code,
and `CC' is an ISO 3166 two-letter country code.  For example, let's
suppose that you speak German and live in Germany.  At the shell
prompt, merely execute `setenv LANG de_DE' (in `csh'),
`export LANG; LANG=de_DE' (in `sh') or `export LANG=de_DE' (in `bash').
This can be done from your `.login' or `.profile' file, once and for
all.

   You might think that the country code specification is redundant.
But in fact, some languages have dialects in different countries.  For
example, `de_AT' is used for Austria, and `pt_BR' for Brazil.  The
country code serves to distinguish the dialects.

   The locale naming convention of `LL_CC', with `LL' denoting the
language and `CC' denoting the country, is the one use on systems based
on GNU libc.  On other systems, some variations of this scheme are
used, such as `LL' or `LL_CC.ENCODING'.  You can get the list of
locales supported by your system for your country by running the command
`locale -a | grep '^LL''.

   Not all programs have translations for all languages.  By default, an
English message is shown in place of a nonexistent translation.  If you
understand other languages, you can set up a priority list of languages.
This is done through a different environment variable, called
`LANGUAGE'.  GNU `gettext' gives preference to `LANGUAGE' over `LANG'
for the purpose of message handling, but you still need to have `LANG'
set to the primary language; this is required by other parts of the
system libraries.  For example, some Swedish users who would rather
read translations in German than English for when Swedish is not
available, set `LANGUAGE' to `sv:de' while leaving `LANG' to `sv_SE'.

   Special advice for Norwegian users: The language code for Norwegian
bokma*l changed from `no' to `nb' recently (in 2003).  During the
transition period, while some message catalogs for this language are
installed under `nb' and some older ones under `no', it's recommended
for Norwegian users to set `LANGUAGE' to `nb:no' so that both newer and
older translations are used.

   In the `LANGUAGE' environment variable, but not in the `LANG'
environment variable, `LL_CC' combinations can be abbreviated as `LL'
to denote the language's main dialect.  For example, `de' is equivalent
to `de_DE' (German as spoken in Germany), and `pt' to `pt_PT'
(Portuguese as spoken in Portugal) in this context.

Translating
===========

EncFS is registered with Launchpad Translations - an online interface
for supplying translations.
See https://translations.launchpad.net/encfs/main/+pots/encfs

If your language is not included in this distribution, you may want
to check if translated text is already available online in Launchpad.
If not, consider translating some of the strings, which will then be
included in the next EncFS release.

# EncFS - an Encrypted Filesystem

_Build Status_
 - Travis: [![Travis CI](https://travis-ci.org/vgough/encfs.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/vgough/encfs)

## About

EncFS provides an encrypted filesystem in user-space. It runs in userspace,
using the FUSE library for the filesystem interface. EncFS is open source
software, licensed under the LGPL.

EncFS is now over 15 years old (first release in 2003).  It was written because
older NFS and kernel-based encrypted filesystems such as CFS had not kept pace with Linux
development.  When FUSE became available, I wrote a CFS replacement for my own
use and released the first version to Open Source in 2003.

EncFS encrypts individual files, by translating all requests for the virtual
EncFS filesystem into the equivalent encrypted operations on the raw
filesystem.

For more info, see:

 - The excellent [encfs manpage](encfs/encfs.pod)
 - The technical overview in [DESIGN.md](DESIGN.md)

## Status

Over the last 15 years, a number of good alternatives have grown up.  Computing
power has increased to the point where it is reasonable to encrypt the entire
filesystem of personal computers (and even mobile phones!).  On Linux, ecryptfs
provides a nice dynamically mountable encrypted home directory, and is well
integrated in distributions I use, such as Ubuntu.

EncFS has been dormant for a while.  I've started cleaning up in order to try
and provide a better base for a version 2, but whether EncFS flowers again
depends upon community interest.  In order to make it easier for anyone to
contribute, it is moving a new home on GitHub (2014).  Since then project has
been updated a few times thanks to several contributors, so if you're
interested in EncFS, please dive in!

## Unique Features

EncFS has a few features still not found anywhere else (as of Dec 2014)
that may be interesting to you:

### Reverse mode

`encfs --reverse` provides an encrypted view of an unencrypted folder.
This enables encrypted remote backups using standard tools like rsync.

### Fast on classical HDDs

EncFS is typically *much* faster than ecryptfs for stat()-heavy workloads
when the backing device is a classical hard disk.
This is because ecryptfs has to to read each file header to determine
the file size - EncFS does not. This is one additional seek for each
stat.
See [PERFORMANCE.md](PERFORMANCE.md) for detailed benchmarks on
HDD, SSD and ramdisk.

### Works on top of network filesystems

EncFS works on network file systems (NFS, CIFS...), while ecryptfs
is known to still have [problems][1].

[1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ecryptfs/+bug/277578

## Development

The master branch contains the latest stable codebase.  This is where bug fixes
and improvments should go.

The [dev](https://github.com/vgough/encfs/tree/dev) branch contains experimental
work, some of which may be back-ported to the master branch when it is stable. The
dev branch is not stable, and there is no guarantee of backward compatibility
between changes.

## Donations

How about a nice email instead?

## Windows

EncFS works on Cygwin, there are also some Windows ports.

See [the wiki](https://github.com/vgough/encfs/wiki)
for additional info.

## FAQ

### What settings should I use for Dropbox?

Use **standard mode**. There [have](https://github.com/vgough/encfs/issues/141)
been [reports](https://github.com/vgough/encfs/issues/388)
of a pathological interaction of paranoia mode with Dropbox' rename
detection. The problem seems to be with `External IV chaining`, which is
not active in standard mode.