I cannot create a user with an encrypted homedir

Question

In previous versions of Ubuntu you could create users with encrypted partition from the "User Accounts" GUI utility. Now this option is absent from Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric). How can you create a user with encrypted homedir in 11.10. Command line instructions acceptable! :)

Answer 1

adduser is a perl script that takes care of the details of adding a user and will do what was removed in GNOME3

sudo adduser --encrypt-home USERNAME

If you upgrade to 11.10 from for example 11.04 then use

sudo adduser --uid OLD_UID --encrypt-home OLD_USERNAME

Make sure to use the same password as the old accounts, use ls -lan /home to find OLD_UID.

Answer 2

I am not sure about an encrypted home partition but to add users

sudo useradd -m -p PASSWORD USERNAME

OR

sudo adduser USERNAME

may also do the trick accoording to their manuals

Answer 3

The lack of graphical way to add a user with an encrypted home in Ubuntu versions using GNOME 3 is documented in bug #816669.