Not able to encrypt user's home folder when creating a new user

Bug #1279766 reported by Jeroen
258
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
gnome-control-center (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

During Ubuntu installation a user is created and there is an option to encrypt the home folder for this user. However, there is no such option when creating other users in System Settings | User Accounts, which might lead to the expectation that other accounts are also created with an encrypted home folder. However that is not the case, other users are created with ordinary home folders as I recently discovered when booting Ubuntu from an USB stick. Also there is no easy option to encrypt them. Please add the same option to the dialog for creating other users.

Note: I considered this a security vulnerability, because the absence of the option to encrypt home folders for creating other users might lead to the assumption that these folders will be encrypted too.

Ubuntu 13.10 x64.

Jeroen (alpenblauwtje)
information type: Private Security → Public Security
Revision history for this message
Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

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tags: added: bot-comment
tags: added: saucy
affects: ubuntu → gnome-control-center (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
John Kim (kotux) wrote :

Hello Jeroen, I think the answer you may be looking for is found here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EncryptedHomeFolder

Hope this helps. Meanwhile, I will set the bug report as invalid. I do think, however, that the Ubuntu Documentation should include some information on this matter.

Changed in gnome-control-center (Ubuntu):
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj) wrote :

@Jeroen: Thanks for your effort to improve Ubuntu by reporting this issue!

@John: This bug report is of course not invalid!! The bug reporter points out an Ubuntu inconsistency which ought to be fixed somehow. It's not less of a bug because you can encrypt a home folder via the command line.

OTOH, this bug is a duplicate, so marking it as such.

Changed in gnome-control-center (Ubuntu):
status: Invalid → Confirmed
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