Installing encfs 1.7.5 on OS X 10.9

encfs-on-darwin-13.md

Currently it's not possible to install encfs on OS X 10.9 using MacPorts (not without manually changing the portfile at least). You can try Brew, although I don't use it.

Here's how I installed it:

1. Do sudo port install encfs. This will fail in the last step, and it's ok – the point is to have port install the dependencies for you

2. Check out the latest stable version of encfs:

   svn co http://encfs.googlecode.com/svn/branches/1.x encfs-1.x
   

3. Change to encfs-1.x, run:

   make -f Makefile.dist
   ./configure
   make
   sudo make install
   

Note that this builds encfs 1.7.5, which bumps its version tag in newly created volumes. Those volumes cannot be used by encfs 1.7.4. So I ended up with creating the volumes first on a Linux box of mine running 1.7.4, then use them on my Mac.

Because my Linux box is slower than my Mac, the number of rounds needed to run the key derivation function is much lower than if the volumes were created on my Mac. That's fine – one trick I found is to change the password on my Mac using encfsctl, and the number of key derivation rounds will be adjusted accordingly.

Also note that you don't want to create the volume on a box once and use that volume as a template, because all your replicated volumes will have the same encryption key, even if you use different passphrases for them. This is especially important if you don't have the per-file IV option enabled – because the same file on two different duplicated volumes would have exactly the same ciphertext, which is bad for security.