My First Compile: TrueCrypt 5.0

What exactly do you think you are doing?

So, TrueCrypt 5.0 is out and since there aren’t currently any 64-bit binaries out, I thought I would buck-up and try to compile it myself. Also, if I did that then I could be all snooty and nod my head sagely when saying you aren’t as safe using binaries because you aren’t sure the source is the same, and some one could have put in a back-door during compilation and so on. That would be so cool. Not really, but anyway, on to compiling…

Truecrypt in Ubuntu

The problem

I use Truecrypt on an external USB drive to protect sensitive information. The entire drive is encrypted, and this is something I have done for a while – so the drive is NTFS formatted because I used it under WinXP as well.

Anyway, today I needed to access the drive and I wanted to do it from Ubuntu.

The solution

1. Obviously, get Truecrypt – I was pleased to find a 64-bit Ubuntu binary package available.

2. I had to determine where my USB drive was – it did not show up simply by my plugging it in, which I assume is because the entire drive is encrypted.

2a. With the drive not plugged in:
$ dmesg > dmesg1

2b. Plug in the USB drive and wait a minute:
$ dmesg > dmesg2

2c. See what changed:
$ diff dmesg1 dmesg2 > dmesg_dif
$ nano dmesg_diff

I got something that looked like this:

559a560,575
> [ 1894.053699] usb 8-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address$
> [ 1894.184176] usb 8-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
> [ 1894.184541] scsi10 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
> [ 1894.184598] usb-storage: device found at 5
> [ 1894.184601] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
> [ 1899.035299] usb-storage: device scan complete
> [ 1899.039924] scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access FUJITSU MHV2060AH 08$
> [ 1899.041103] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] 117210240 512-byte hardware sectors (60012$
> [ 1899.042321] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
> [ 1899.042329] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
> [ 1899.043174] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] 117210240 512-byte hardware sectors (60012$
> [ 1899.044373] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
> [ 1899.044375] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
> [ 1899.044378] sdb: unknown partition table
> [ 1899.119887] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
> [ 1899.119924] sd 10:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0

From that, it was easy enough to tell that the drive was sitting on /dev/sdb.

3. Create a mounting point, I used:
$ sudo mkdir /media/tc

4. I mounted the drive using truecrypt:
$ truecrypt /dev/sdb /media/tc

That’s it! The volume appeared on the desktop and I could read and write from it!