FatFrame Technology…. and stuff

MacFuse Issues with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

I started using EncFS to do file level encryption for my Dropbox account after the recent security issues with Dropbox. I opted to use EncFS instead of TrueCrypt since I did not want to deal with an encrypted container file. On my Windows PC, I use BoxCryptor and on my Mac I use the software packages referenced in this guide.

So far this has been working great, I can keep my sensitive data encrypted and leave everything else as is. Even if someone gets into my account the important items are just garbage to them. The only problem I ran into was with the recent OS X 10.7 Lion upgrade breaking MacFUSE.

After doing some Googling I was able to find this blog post:
http://www.offthehill.org/articles/2010/12/31/macfuse-for-64-bit-snow-leopard/

All I had to do was download and install the latest version of XCode from the app store and compile/install the modified MacFUSE source. Per Offthehill.org:

Just Give Me Something To Install!
If you trust me and would just like a working version of MacFUSE to install, you can download an image I compiled myself: macfuse-core-10.5-2.1.9.zip.

I Want To Compile It Myself
You can download the original source code directly from Tuxera or from my local mirror.

You will obviously need XCode installed to compile MacFUSE. Once you have downloaded the source, open a terminal and run the following commands:

Downloads $ cd macfuse-rebel-2.1.9 macfuse-rebel-2.1.9 $ cd core/ core $ ./macfuse_buildtool.sh -t smalldist

It generates a directory in the /tmp directory called “macfuse-core-10.5-2.1.9”. Inside this directory is a .pkg file called “MacFUSE Core.pkg”. Just double click this file to install, and MacFUSE will be installed. Then, once installed, you can install TrueCrypt or whatever Fuse implementation you need, and it should work fine.

The Standard Disclaimer
I make no claims about how stable this code is, and I have no idea about anything in the MacFUSE internals, so please report any problems you have with this version of the code to the MacFUSE Google Group.

And that's it, it appears that there is a fork of MacFUSE called OSXFuse, but it seems to be just getting off the ground. In the meantime, the above method should be able to get people by. Hopefully there will be a Mac OX app similar to BoxCryptor to make this a bit easier for users.

UPDATE: BoxCryptor has provided an updated all in one installer that works great. I tested with a fresh install of Lion and have not had any issues. You can see their article here.