this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
50 points (96.3% liked)

Selfhosted

40329 readers
348 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Hey everyone! :)

I am currently looking to replace Obsidian with a self-hostable alternative (that preferably also uses Markdown - but it's not a must) but instead of storing the files directly on disk has a way to have all the files within in an encrypted vault / binary format.

Reason being I have very very sensitive data that needs to be stored (employee & medically related).

I read that Logseq used to support this feature but it has since been deprecated, some light googling didn't surface any results other than that so I would be delighted if anyone had any suggestions!

Thanks so much in advance for any and all help! :)

edit: Forgot to mention that it needs to support Linux as well as Android

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Jocarnail@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

If you are storing manly on one device and are looking for a relatively "simple" solution for encryption at rest I would suggest to just encrypt the folder/directory/image the data are living in.

Of course, this way you have to decrypt the data while you are using it. However, it separates the responsibility from the note taking app.

This may or may not be a good solution for your use case, but it should be fast and easy to implement.

I used to do this with some mildly sensitive data using a mac encrypted disk image with plain markdowns files inside. I accessed the files with vscode, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with Obsidian. It may just be a bit of a hassle to open the vault each time.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is a security risk! Some note taking apps store data outside of the notes directory (e.g. Logseq)

[–] Jocarnail@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Good to know, but this is a security risk of the note taking app, not of the encryption method itself.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Since the method is encryption of the notes folder, I would consider it to be one

[–] daddy32@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I think this is the best answer. Separation of concerns and all. And OP can keep using whatever notes app he is right now or even switch to another, without the additional encryption requirement.

[–] dingdongitsabear@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I wanted to write the same thing. have the notes app do the notes thing and handle encryption elsewhere.

as to apps, I suggest QOwnNotes. it's markdown, highly configurable so you can make it minimalistic AF, stores notes in invidual files and folders. it also has a bunch functionality like syncing to nexctcolud and such, but I'd advise against it, just use it as a notes editor. you don't have to selfhost anything, make it use the e.g. Documents/Notes folder and you can use syncthing to securely replicate it to other devices.