Knox Discussion Forums

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do I back up my system with Knox?

The backup functionality in Knox is intended for backing up Knox vaults. It is not really suitable for backing up your whole system, including your applications and Mac OS X itself. Here at MK&C, we store our documents in separate, per-project Knox vaults. We then schedule backups in Knox for these vaults.

Separately, we use SuperDuper! to create working, bootable mirror copies of our systems. You could easily encrypt such a mirror by making it on a Knox whole-disk vault, but such a copy wouldn’t be bootable. If you can exclude any confidential material from the mirror, you will make a system recovery much easier.

Does Knox compress data?

No. In Knox vaults, your data takes up as much space as it would elsewhere.

How do I delete a Knox vault?

Go to Preferences > Vaults, choose the vault(s) you want to delete, then click Move Selected to Trash. By default, the vaults are stored in the Library/Knox under your home folder; you can also manage them manually in Finder.

Do Knox vaults work on Windows?

No. Knox is Mac-only because it uses Mac OS’s encrypted disk images to encrypt data. This technology is not available on Windows.

Is Knox compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard?

Yes. Time Machine, Leopard’s new backup feature, however, is not a good match for bigger Knox vaults, so we recommend disabling their backup in Time Machine preferences and using Knox’s own backup feature to schedule their backups.

Why would I use Knox rather than Disk Utility?

It’s all in the user interface. We think creating and managing disk images manually is a chore, and created Knox to help. We also automated backup functionality. Try Knox for 30 days to see if you think it’s worth the price: if not, the vaults you created work just fine with Disk Utility.

How about FileVault?

FileVault has it’s pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it’s very easy to set up, and encrypts a lot of data: your whole home folder. The downside is that all your files are stored in one big vault file that’s always open. With Knox, you can easily create a bunch of vaults, for each of your projects or clients. You can open and close Knox vaults on demand, so that only the one you’re working with is open at any given time.

I have lost my license key. How can I recover it?

Our systems are able to resend your purchase receipt, including your license key, when provided with the email address you entered when purchasing Knox. If you don’t remember that email address, or can’t access it, no worries. Otherwise, enter the email address here:

I have a few Macs I would like to run Knox on. Do you offer Family Pack pricing or volume discounts?

Volume discounts are available when purchasing five or more Knox licenses. There is no Family Pack price.

That said, you won’t necessarily need multiple Knox licenses. A single Knox license covers either a single user on up to two Macs (a desktop and a laptop) or an unlimited number of users on a single machine. So if you are the only user of a desktop and a laptop, you only need one license to cover both. Additionally, Knox 1.5 and later can be used without a license to open and close vaults. So if you can create your vaults on one Mac and only access existing vaults on the others, you again only need a single license.

Could you add a feature for closing Knox vaults automatically after some time?

We get requests for this every once in a while, but we recommend just using a password-protected screensaver instead. With automatic unmount, we’d either have to err on the side of data safety (do not unmount if there are open files), or on the side of security (force unmount even if there are open files). We really don’t want to make that call on behalf of our users-with thousands of you out there, we’d surely make the wrong choice from someone’s point of view.

Which settings should I set in the System Preferences to make my Mac secure?

We run our Macs with the following settings: In the Security preference pane, Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver, Disable automatic login, Use secure virtual memory. In the Desktop & Screen Saver pane, we set up a short time to start the screensaver, and also specify a hot corner to launch it immediately when we leave the computer. In the Sharing preference pane, we disable all services we don’t use and turn on the firewall. Finally, we disable safe sleep.

I would like to know more about security. Do you have any books to recommend?

For additional reading about security matters, the Knox team at MK&C suggests the following books and publications:

• Mac OS X Security Configuration Guides by Apple and the National Security Agency
• Beyond Fear and Secrets and Lies by Bruce Schneier (Amazon.com)

How do I use the Master Key feature?

See the forum post How to create and use a Master Key.

How is the Knox whole-disk vault feature implemented?

Knox whole-disk vaults, like other Knox vaults, are encrypted disk images. But when reformatting a drive as a whole-disk vault, Knox hides the underlying host volume, so that you only ever see the encrypted vault. This gives you the user experience of an encrypted drive with the superior compatibility of an encrypted disk image.

How do I turn a whole-disk vault back into a regular hard drive or USB stick?

First, close the vault and disconnect the device. Then quit Knox, and connect the device again. Launch Disk Utility (in Applications/Utilities) and reformat the drive.

How do I uninstall Knox?

Just drag and drop the Knox application into Trash. There are no other components. By default, the vaults are stored in the Library/Knox under your home folder—you can delete that folder, too, if the vaults don’t contain any information you want to keep.

If your Knox question was not answered here, please post a new topic for it in our forums!

Bugs And Feedback

Uh oh, I’ve found a bug in Knox!

If so, we’d love to hear about it. If the bug you are encountering actually crashes Knox, please launch Knox again and send a crash report our way with Knox’s built-in problem reporter. If you want, you’ll get a reply just as if you had emailed us. This way we, however, get much more information about what went wrong than you’d ever want to type into an email message.

We’d love to hear your opinions.

Knox is great? Knox sucks? Knox would be perfect for you if it only had this one little thing? We couldn’t be more interested in what you have to say. The Knox discussion forum is perfect for these kinds of issues, but you can always talk to the helpdesk if you prefer to. Your issue will be read and carefully considered by the Knox team, and when we’re done, you’ll get a reply.

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