Hi,
I have installed PortableApps-Base on my USB-Device the first time. Installed a few PortableApps applications like Firefox Portable, Thunderbird Portable and so on. The problem is that the Mozilla Profiles are saved in "plain-text"(not encrypted) on the USB-Device. So in case of loosing my stick everyone is able to look through all my emails and so on.
Besides the PortableApps applications I installed TrueCrypt and run it in Traveler-Mode. So from my point of view there a two alternative solutions to prevent others from watching my profile-data:
1) Create a TrueCrypt container-file. Mount this container-file as a virtual drive let us say Z: and install all PortableApps onto this virtual drive Z:. So everything including all applications is know encrypted. But because of the need to load a virtual device driver by TrueCrypt it is neccessary to have admin privleges on windows systems. So, I cannot even run a single application because I have to install everything(because of the PortableApps-Menu) into the virtual drive Z:.
2) I install all PortableApps directly on the USB-Device without any encryption. Now I create a TrueCrypt container file. Mount this file as the virtual drive let us say Z: again. Run the following command to create a new Thunderbird-Profile(assuming that my USB-Device is drive G:):
G:\PortableApps\ThunderbirdPortable\App\Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe -profile "Z:\TBprofile" -CreateProfile
Furthermore, I copied G:\PortableApps\ThunderbirdPortable\Other\Source\ThunderbirdPortable.ini to G:\PortableApps\ThunderbirdPortable and tried to change the Profile-Location pointing to my profile at the given Location on the virtual drive Z:
But it seems that only relative path-values are supported because the ThunderbirdPortable.exs-Launcher creates the directories "Z\TBprofile" in the base directory "G:\PortableApps\ThunderbirdPortable"
Because I want to use the PortableApps also at university I need to get the second solution(mentioned above) running. I do not need access to my mails at university because I have a separate mail-account with web-access but I would like to use other applications like OpenOffice. So my questions are:
- Are there any known solutions and/or workarounds to use Profiles located on different drives?
- Is there any other known solution and/or workaround to ensure profile encryption of at least Thunderbird Portable and Sunbird Portable
For the sake of completeness, I used the latest german downloads that was available today. So I think everyone can reproduce the situation easily.
Sorry in response to the guidelines for this rather long post. But I do not know how to give a shorter explanation of the situation in english.
Thanks a lot in advance.
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Just put both the app and the data in the TrueCrypt container and your problem is solved. The apps are designed to run from a single drive letter. They will not work across drives.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Well, thanks for the very quick response. Your answer describes what I tried to state by solution 1). The problem is, that I cannot mount the TrueCrypt-Container at the university because of missing admin privileges. So I would have to administer to different PortableApps versions on my USB-device. One for use without TrueCrypt and one for use with TrueCrypt. So I would have two PortableApps-Menus one with the encrypted applications like Thunderbird and one with not encrypted applications like OpenOffice. So I would prefer a solution using just one Portable-Apps-Menu for the sake of convenience. Is there a way to realize that?
You can install TB to both the unencrypted and encrypted partition if you want 2 profiles. In an upcoming release of the PA platform, you'll be able to have some apps on encrypted and some not and it'll adjust if you can mount vs not. One of the PA menu mods has this feature now in their alpha/experimental release, but it's not supported.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thank you very much. Than I will create two PA-Menus at first and have a look for an updated PA platform.
You do not need the PA menu/platform. It is just a convenience.
I would suggest that you install the platform and the rest of your apps normally on the flash drive, and install only ThunderbirdPorable on the z: drive.
The menu is just a convenience. You can launch TBP perfectly well by running z:\PortableApps\ThunderbirdPortable\ThunderbirdPortable.exe directly.
Another alternative is that one of the unofficial menu forks (which means that it isn't supported on this site) called geek menu has built in support for truecrypt, which means that it can try to mount the z:\ drive for you, and then enumerate both drives for apps to integrate into one menu structure.
I've used it quite a bit, and it seems very stable, but your milage may vary. If you're interested, you can findit at https://portableapps.com/node/9883 or on SF at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=209346
Thanks, for your answer and links. But I do not understand why the PortableApps-Menu is not more flexible. If I understood you correctly, it would be enough to make the PA-Menu extensible in a way that you can add menu-entries by yourself. For instance create a menu-entry called: "ThunderbirdPortable TrueCrypt" which starts "Z:\PortabelApps\ThunderbirdPortable\ThunderbirdPortable.exe". Furthermore, this would enable that you can run stickware which is not directly supported by PortableApps. I.e. for a test run before supporting it directly in the PA platform.