Problem sharing BoxCryptor Folder in Virtual Box

AxelSt

Hi all,

I share my BoxCryptor (1.3.2.0) folder (that drive with the decrypted files) with a virtual WinXP machine using VirtualBox (newest version). BoxCryptor is ONLY running on the host (Win7 machine) and not on the virtual PC. Everything works great, e.g. I can directly open a text file (unencrypted) in Notepad or the like on the virtual machine. However, there is one strange thing: whenever a DIR command (directory listing) is given on the shared drive by me (e.g. in a DOS box) or by any application (e.g. the windows explorer) in the virtual machine, the listing is looped endlessly. E.g. when I open a DOS box on the virtual machine, change to the shared drive (i.e. the BoxCryptor drive of the host) and do a "DIR", the contents of that directory is listed repeatedly until I do a CTRL-C. Analogously, when I click on the directory in the windows explorer, it will freeze the explorer (as it sticks internally in that DIR-loop). This happens ONLY to the shared BoxCryptor directory, and ONLY on the virtual machine (on the host, the DIR command on the BoxCryptor drive works as it should).

Can you acknowledge this problem? To me this problem is really bad because I'd like to have a virtual machine on the DropBox which accesses private documents on the DropBox. I have worked with Wuala before, which already integrates the encryption and has a similar concept of providing a decrypted drive. There, the drive was fully transparent also to the virtual machine.

Thanks in advance for your answer,
Axel

neiaberau

Although not identical, this sounds similar to the triplication observable when using cygwin and boxcryptor 1.3.2 (mentioned in other post).

Now, unfortunately, the reaction to the post is not only similar, but identical, i.e. nothing. Obviously non paying customers cannot expect a fix (the other ones open a support ticket), but the least I would expect is an acknowledgement of the issue or statement of not supporting non standard or virtualized windows environments.

As a possible solution, try downgrading to 1.2. In my case the triplication is then gone and boxcryptor itself is faster. But afterwards I go so annoyed by another issue in combination with deletion of read only folders/files, which is according to the boxcryptor team an issue of windows. So I switched to encfs4win and there the issue did not occur so I think, the demonstrates where the issue actually was (I have not tested, but assume it is fixed in 1.3 release).

In summary I use now encfs4win an do have no problems, pc is based on win 7 32bit. For 64bit the dokan driver supposedly has some issues.

I may retry bc, but only after 1.4 is out and the issues are fixed.

Robert

Hi,

We did not have any time yet to reproduce the problem ourselves as it seems to only affect very few users. As soon as I have any information for you, I'll keep you updated asap.

-- Robert

AxelSt

Hi,

Thank you Neiaberau for our answer. I am not sure whether encfs4win would be something for me, as I definitely need to access my files from Android too and I am not sure whether encfs provides this feature.
Plus, I am not at all angry that I did not receive any answer yet. I know my case is quite unusual and maybe I want too much :) However, I believe that more and more users will put a virtual machine in the cloud and they would like to access private documents from that machine and from their mobile devices as well. This is my scenario.
I tried Cloudfogger and TrueCrypt and they have all their disadvantages. Up to now, Wuala and BoxCryptor are the best choices for my scenario. However, they are not perfect (no-one is perfect :)): Wuala is not so well integrated in Android as the combo Dropbox+BoxCryptor and BoxCryptor has the problem I mentioned above.
However, I can wait until the developers have reproduced and fixed the issue. I would DEFINITELY pay for BoxCryptor in that case.

Axel

PS: By the way, I also tried two other things without success: I installed BoxCryptor in the virtual machine and tried to access the encrypted container from there. However, I got an error "unhandled exception" when trying to assign a drive letter to the *.bc container. Probably, because the container is already occupied by the host system. Also I installed DropBox in the virtual machine and accessed the BoxCryptor container from there. This worked of course, but then I would have an additional DropBox sync directory in the virtual machine containing exactly the same files as on the host. With 20GB DropBoxx space, this is a lot of wasted space and bandwith for syncing twice.

AxelSt

just one thing: where can I still get BoxCryptor 1.2? I have a problem to find the previous version :(

Axel

AxelSt

Ok forget my last post. I found and installed BoxCryptor 1.2 and you were right, Neiaberau, there the problem with the VirtualBox shared drive does not exist :)

Axel

CC

@all

Hello, would you mind to check whether BC 1.2 installs the same CBFS version as BC 1.3.2.0

I'm not sure if this is the best place to check the CBFS version number, but I found the following BC 1.3.2.0 install.log file fragment in C:\Program Files\BoxCryptor

CBFS Module 1 not installed.
CBFS Module 65536 installed: 3.2.110.180
CBFS Module 131072 installed: 3.2.110.103
CBFS install 1 OK
CBFS driver OK
CBFS network redirector DLL OK
CBFS mount notifier DLL OK

neiaberau

BC 1.2 does use Dokan, which has some limitations, whereas BC 1.3.2 uses CBFS (by eldos ?).
So the cause of the issues in 1.3.2 could be caused by either one, BC or CBFS

Robert

As neiaberau pointed out, BoxCryptor v1.2 uses Dokan (as does encfs4win - which has some serious problems on some machines, e.g. BSODs) and in v1.3 we switched to CBFS (from Eldos) which works much more reliable. We'll try to find the cause for the problem asap, but we're having some issues with higher priorities on our todo-list at the moment.

AxelSt

Robert, thank you for answering. Again: for me everything is ok :) I can imagine how busy you are. BC 1.2 works well for me. No problem :)

Axel

CC

@neiaberau:
>> BC 1.2 does use Dokan, which has some limitations, whereas BC 1.3.2 uses CBFS (by eldos ?).

Thanks a lot for mentioning this, the first BC version I installed was 1.3.X (?)

>> So the cause of the issues in 1.3.2 could be caused by either one, BC or CBFS

Yes, probably, but is it unlikely that interfacing / wrapper like software layers such as VirtualBox, Cygwin, and others may perhaps cause the problem ?

There is at least one software system (CloudFogger, also CBFS based) that has the same Cygwin triplication problem.

@robert:
Please take your time, we're not in a hurry, it's often possible to find useful workarounds.

AxelSt

Hi CC

in my case, of course VirtualBox "causes" the problem, as BoxCryptor 1.3 works very well for me on the host PC without showing the DIR-List problem I started this threat with. However, I do not think it is a bug in VirtualBox. What I suspect is just that the sharing of a drive with a virtual PC accesses functions of the filesystem which are ordinarily not used and therefore show a problem which is usually hidden.
If Cloudfogger shows a similar problem and is also CBFS-based while BC 1.2 does not show the problem and uses Dokan, the suspicion is justified that maybe CBFS has a bug, or not? :) Maybe I should post a request in the CBFS-forum?

Axel

CC

To complicate the problem a bit, Wuala is also CBFS based and according to your first post Wuala worked in the context of VirtualBox. ( I assume you used Wuala's CBFS edition ).