Re: Using tar or gzip with file passwd protection!

[David Z Maze <dmaze@debian.org>]

"louie miranda" <louie@chikka.com> writes:
> Im just curios on tar and gzip, can i add passwd protected compressed files
> using this application?

You can gpg-encrypt individual files and package them in a tar file,
sure.  Or create the tar file, gpg-encrypt it, and then compress it.
Or create the gzipped tarball and use gpg to encrypt it.  :-)

(It's a fairly standard thing for Unix tools to do one thing and do it
well.  So the act of packaging multiple files into a single archive,
as you might do for a tape backup, is separate from the act of
compressing files, though the two activities are common enough that
GNU tar [though not other Un*x tars] has a 'z' flag to run gzip over
the result.  There's noticably less demand for encrypted archives (and
encrypted files in general); GNU Privacy Guard, more generally
referred to as gnupg or gpg, is a PGP-compatible DFSG-free utility
that can do this.)

For example:

  tar cf foo.tar foo
  gzip foo.tar
  gpg -c foo.tar.gz

will ask you for a passphrase, and produce foo.tar.gz.gpg.  The
recipient then needs to do

  gpg foo.tar.gz.gpg
  gunzip foo.tar.gz
  tar xvf foo.tar

-- 
David Maze         dmaze@debian.org      http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell