Password protecting archives

[DoYouKubuntu]

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but Ark is not working as expected. I want to password-protect some files; that part works fine--but the option to require the password before viewing the archive is grayed out:



I've tried changing every option to see if it became available, but no. WTF?

[claydoh]

It works using rar and 7-zip (7z format), if those are installed. I will guess the feature is not supported in zip files, or not by the system's zip executable.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Yes, those are all installed, @claydoh. I've never used 7-zip, so I thought I'd stick with familiar types. I wanted to save these as tar.gz files, but that offered no password protection at all. When I saw that zip does, I thought it was a mistake/problem that the choice was grayed out for prompting for password when viewing the archive.

Is there anything in particular I need to know about 7-zip? Or am I safe to assume that if I can create it, I'd be able to unpack it if needed? I'm cleaning up my laptop before it sets out on its adventure, and I'm uploading these archives to Amazon Drive. (Of course I also have local backups!)

[claydoh]

Dunno. Can't recall using this in ages and ages, probably back in my warez-ing days. Zips are near universal and does not seem to need extra software mo matter the device or OS.
p7-zip often needs to be installed no matter which OS is being used.

[kubicle]

As mentioned, zip format only encrypts the files, not the zip "container", so file metadata is still readable. You can work around that by "double-zipping" (that is create a zip first [doesn't need to be encrypted, and can be another archive format like tar.gz], and then rezip it as encrypted, password protected zip).

Using 7z is nearly always a better and easier option, though, and quite good for a quick and easy solution. For heavier encryption needs, I'd go with gpg (mainly for it's versatility, and asymmetric public/private key encryption, although you can also use symmetric passphrase encryption with it).

gpg does require a bit of studying and configuration to use it effectively to it's full potential, even though there are graphical front-ends to it available [kgpg, kleopatra].

A few links:
https://www.ernstrenner.com/encrypti...-gpg-and-7zip/
https://www.networkworld.com/article...-on-linux.html

[DoYouKubuntu]

What has me baffled--and, no, that's not an unusual condition for me lately!--is that I KNOW I used to password protect zipped files such that you had to supply the password before viewing the contents. And I don't mean double-zipping. (Thanks for that suggestion @kubicle.) I also remember using an archive utility besides Ark, but for the life of me I can't think of what it was. I searched Synaptic yesterday for anything related to 'archive' and eventually gave up, deciding that I'll just use Ark. Can anyone think of what it might have been that I used in the past?

[kubicle]

What has me baffled--and, no, that's not an unusual condition for me lately!--is that I KNOW I used to password protect zipped files such that you had to supply the password before viewing the contents. And I don't mean double-zipping. (Thanks for that suggestion @kubicle.) I also remember using an archive utility besides Ark, but for the life of me I can't think of what it was. I searched Synaptic yesterday for anything related to 'archive' and eventually gave up, deciding that I'll just use Ark. Can anyone think of what it might have been that I used in the past?

There are are quite many implementations of zip out there (and all standardization efforts are fairly recent, and have been met with varying degrees of success...one more reason to use other formats). It's possible some recent implementations do have metadata encryption, but I don't think that is part of the "standard" format.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Okay, well, it's all good. What I'm doing is working okay, so I'm not going to sweat it. As I thought about it more, I realized it had to be something like 7-8 years ago that I last password-protected archive files. Who knows what I was using back then?! I just remember that, in Dolphin, when I'd right-click I'd get more than just Ark as an option for compressing/decompressing files. Oh well, no worries!