How to Password Protect a Folder into a Compressed Password Protected Archive File

There are numerous ways to encrypt a file or a directory under Linux.

 

Some of these methods involve deploying specific encryption utilities or public/private key systems such as gpg.

 

I wanted to deploy a simple method that relies on mainstream tools which are usually present on most if not all Linux systems.

 

The method described below uses tar and zip/unzip.

 

 

Create a Tar Archive

 

 

First, tar the folder into a .tar archive:

 

eg

 

tar -cvf folder.tar /folder

 

 

Create a Password Protected Compressed File using zip

 

 

then zip the .tar file:

 

zip -re folder.tar.zip folder.tar

 

it will prompt you to enter a password of your choosing and then verify it

 

 

To Unzip

 

 

to unzip you have to use

 

unzip <zip.file>

 

This will prompt you to enter the password

 

unzip folder.tar.zip

 

 

 

Untar

 

tar -xvf folder.tar

 

this then recreates the directory structure and the contents