[Captivate Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] BrainSlugs83:
Interesting. I can either encrypt a whole USB drive/memory card, or just make an encryption file on it. I don't know what it's doing behind the scenes, but there is certainly nothing in the UI that indicates it's not doing all the work in memory. That doesn't mean it's not happening-- I'm just surprised is all.

I'm not so worried about encrypting the OS or the internal storage ROM; none of that ever changes anyway (at least to my knowledge) -- I just want to encrypt my SD card. That's it. Maybe I'm unique here?

Yes they do. I just pulled my SD card out and put it in a generic memory card reader, plugged it into my computer, and checked and see what format it was using. My 16GB SD card for my G2 is using fat32.

Further, a quick google search shows it's not unique to my specific handset.

* some more quick web searching brings up the android source code repository *

Okay, so here is the documentation for the vfat support (vfat is about the same thing as fat32):

android.git.kernel.org/?p=kernel/common.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/filesystems/vfat.txt;h=ead764b2728f8a20731ece907475b1966a35ce86;hb=HEAD

And in case you needed to see more, here is teh codez where it's implemented:

android.git.kernel.org/?p=kernel/common.git;a=tree;f=fs/fat;h=0c074dedbc53b374520cd0b9f820ebaf18d500c7;hb=HEAD

(apologies again, those are http urls, but I still can't post links yet.)

Its part of the common android Kernel... so yeah, my phone isn't magic. ;-) It can read fat, and it can do that because it's Android. :D

That's true. Probably good advice anyway if I plan to run it on a phone -- for performance differences alone!

Though the file system drivers are a pretty damn bare bones part of the kernel, so functionality-wise, I think it's still doable... though, enough people have trouble just RUNNING android 1.6 on their PCs... Phone-only dev is probably the way to go. Just thinking aloud. I also have this old Motorola Droid (first gen) from Verizon that I haven't done anything with... maybe if I do any custom kernel dev I'll use that. Since it's older, I'll have the added benefit of slowness being more apparent.

I'm not saying write a new kernel, that's a bit much! I'm just saying use the existing open source kernel, and just modify one small piece -- probably just that one folder of files linked above would be enough to enable the technical parts of the deal -- or for the alternate solution that I posted, kernel modification wouldn't even be required, just some modifications to Dalvik's version of the JRE, so when an app called to read/write from the file system, the JRE did the encoding (this would be more stable than a kernel mod, just by virtue of not being a kernel mod...) -- either way the hard parts would be making it performant, and surfacing something in the GUI so the user can enter a password and having it tie back in. At least, that's my guess.

Nah, there's no profit in that. We all know google sells our data for $25 a person to the US gov. anyway (if we don't know this, we should look it up ;)), they're not trying to help us be more secure, if there is a finger/dna scanner or voice analyzer/or poop-goer-througher-to-verify-my-identity-somehower it will just serve as a replacement for the keypad lock.

Though interestingly enough, I did stumble across a directory in the source tree browser that looked like drivers for hardware accelerated encryption devices... so maybe some handsets already have hardware accelerated encryption... :-)

edit: ahh here it is-> android.git.kernel.org/?p=kernel/common.git;a=tree;f=drivers/crypto;h=54f0655982582b1ef684fedc29d32a8bd0c2f0b5;hb=HEAD (again, that's http...) Hmm, ones for the geode. Are they making geode powered android devices? That'd be freaking sweet. I'd buy a geode powered tablet today... Also it would show a real commitment to bring android back to the i386 arch...

Anyway, off topic, but as far as modding my phone goes, what's the easiest/cleanest mod for a G2 right now? I'd like to go very slimline and get a lot of the preinstalled crap off that I can't uninstall. Any suggestions?

Thanks man!