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Ubuntu’s Encrypted Home Folder is Annoying March 21st, 2011

What's the Deal?

I'm sure for most people an encrypted home directory is no problem at all. However, there is one area where an encrypted home directory just does not work that well — virtual hosts.

I like to setup my Ubuntu development system with all my projects in my home directory. They reside someplace like: /home/victor/projects/. I then use virtual hosts so I can link something like http://test.localhost/ to the code inside /home/victor/projects/test.

This worked well when my home directory was not encrypted. However, once I installed Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat), I decided to give home folder encryption a try. This totally broke my virtual hosts.

Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Denied!

The Solutions

I found three ways around this problem:

  • Some crazy code
  • Encrypt the whole drive, not just your home folder
  • Screw encryption all together
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