Last updated: September 14, 2026tiCrypt 2.17.9

Share Drives

Sharing a drive grants another user access to that drive's encryption key. Sharing is not a filesystem permission that the server enforces on your behalf: because tiCrypt stores only ciphertext it cannot decrypt, the only way for someone else to read a drive is for them to hold a key for it. This is why sharing requires the View drive keys permission, and why the effect of sharing is different from what a shared folder does elsewhere.

Why sharing hands over a key

The server cannot grant access on your behalf. On a conventional system, an administrator can add someone to an access list and the filesystem enforces it. In tiCrypt the data at rest is opaque to the server, so access is granted by giving out a key rather than by editing a list. The practical consequence is that sharing is an act by the data owner, not by an administrator.

Revoking access stops future mounts, not past reads. Unsharing removes a user's ability to mount the drive from that point on. It cannot retract what they have already decrypted and read. Treat sharing as a disclosure decision, not a reversible toggle.

Co-owning a VM implies drive access. Adding a user as a co-owner of a VM configuration gives them access to that VM's drives, because co-owners need drive access to manage the machine. If you want a colleague to use a machine without reading everything on it, give them a lower VM role rather than co-ownership.

Project tags on a drive are a classification, not a label. Tagging a drive with a project records which regulatory regime its contents fall under, which is what makes the audit trail meaningful. Removing or forcing a project tag is a declassification action and requires the corresponding project-management permission.

Before you begin

• You have the Share drives and View drive keys permissions.
• The recipient is an active user, and for project-tagged drives, a member of that project.
• The drive is not currently mounted by a running VM if you are changing its project.

Add or Change a Project in a Drive

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to add or change the project.
4. Click the Open Full Menu button in the top right corner.
5. Select Change project.
6. In the pop-up, select a project to tag the drive.
7. Click Classify.

tip

Check your changes in the drive. The project tag name displays by the drive in the list or in the drive details under the drive owner name.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Did Not Select Any Project

No change made.

Classified Project in Drive

Classify drive-name to project-name(total-classifying-time).

Failed to Classify Project in Drive

Changing a project tag on a running VM does not take effect until the VM is restarted, even if the VM configuration reflects the updated project tag.

Failed to load LUKS header from device: invalid argument.

Ask the VM Owner to Restart VM

Ask the VM owner to restart the VM. Once the VM is restarted, log in again to view the changes.

To Virtual Machine Owner
To restart the VM, follow the steps in 

Restart a Virtual Machine.

Forcefully Add or Change a Project in a Drive

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to add or change the project.
4. Click the Open Full Menu button in the top right corner.
5. Select Change project.
6. In the pop-up, tick Use my permission to override rules, re-tag resources with any visible project, regardless of current project relations.
7. Select any project to tag the drive.
8. Click Force change with admin privilege.

note

Forcefully tagging a drive with a project is only available to users with admin or super-admin roles in the system.

Remove a Project from a Drive

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to remove the project from.
4. Click the Open Full Menu button in the top right corner.
5. Select Change project.
6. In the pop-up, select No project (unlocked) to remove the project tag from the drive.
7. Click Declassify.

note

If you are a super-admin and do not belong to the project, you can use the Force change with admin privilege option to forcibly remove a project tag.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Removed Project Successfully

Declassify drive-name completely (total-declassifying-time).

Share a Drive with Other Users

bulk-action

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to share.
4. Click the Open Full Menu button by the selected drive in the left panel list.
5. Select Share.
6. In the prompt, click the Share with a user button in the top right corner.
7. In the pop-up, enter and select the user names to share the drive with.
8. Click Share.
9. Once done, click Close.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Shared Drive Successfully

Shared with total-number-of-users user(s).

No Users to Share in Drive Share Prompt

This drive cannot be shared.

Attach the Drive to a Virtual Machine

The drive must be initialized and attached to a virtual machine before it can be shared.

Unable to Click Drive Share Button

Failed to look up keys for drive-name: Insufficient permissions to list drive keys for drive drive-string-id.

Ask Drive Owner(s) to Share the Drive

You must ask the drive owner(s) to share the drive with the user(s).

To Drive Owner
Your drive users cannot further share a home drive that is read-write attached to a running VM. Only you can perform the drive share action.

Take extra caution: Verify that the drive keys were generated correctly upon VM creation.  

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the VMs section on the top left panel.
3. In the left panel, click the virtual machine to view its logs.
4. Click the VM Settings and Details option in the bottom center.
5. In the new window, select the Logs section in the left panel.
6. View the last 50 log entries.
7. Click Load Older to view older logs.
8. Look for an early error upon VM creation "error in homedriveattached function: failed to generate ssh host keys:failed to generate host key-id key: failed to generate key: exit status 255".
9. Once done, click Close.
10. Contact the system administrator for further inspection.

Give Full-Access (Read-Write) of a Drive to a User

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to give full-access to.
4. Click the Share button in the top panel.
5. In the prompt, select Full-access next to the shared user(s) in the right column.
6. Once done, click Close.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Shared Drive Successfully

Shared with total-number-of-users user(s).

Cannot Change Drive Owner Share Status to Full-Access

Failed to share drive: Failed to execute 'encrypt' on 'SubtleCrypto': The provided value is not of type '(ArrayBuffer or ArrayBufferView)'.

Ask the Drive Owner to Change Their Own Status

Regardless of the user role, only the drive owner can change their drive status.

Change Own Share Status to Full-Access in a Shared Ready Drive

Failed to share drive: Only users who own keys to a Drive may add additional keys.

Ask the Drive Owner to Reshare Drive With You

The drive owner shares a ready drive with you so you can attach it to a VM as instructed. If you change your share status to full-access before attaching the drive, you will lose access and the drive will disappear from your drive list. Either attach the ready drive to a VM yourself or ask the drive owner to do it for you.

Give Read-Only Access of a Drive to a User

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to give read-only access to.
4. Click the Share button in the top panel.
5. In the prompt, select Read-Only next to the shared user(s) in the right column.
6. Once done, click Close.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Shared Drive Successfully

Shared with total-number-of-users user(s).

Cannot Change Drive Owner Share Status to Read-Only

Failed to share drive: Failed to execute 'encrypt' on 'SubtleCrypto': The provided value is not of type '(ArrayBuffer or ArrayBufferView)'.

Ask the Drive Owner to Change Their Own Status

Regardless of the user role, only the drive owner can change their drive status.

Change Own Share Status to Read-Only in a Shared Ready Drive

Failed to share drive: Only users who own keys to a Drive may add additional keys.

Ask the Drive Owner to Reshare Drive With You

The drive owner shares a ready drive with you so you can attach it to a VM as instructed. If you change your share status to read-only before attaching the drive, you will lose access and the drive will disappear from your drive list. Either attach the ready drive to a VM yourself or ask the drive owner to do it for you.

Edit Drive Details

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to edit.
4. Click the Edit drive button in the top panel list.
5. In the prompt, edit the drive name, relation to team, project, or realm, backup settings, and other advanced metadata.
6. Click Update.

Migrate a Drive to a Different Storage Pool

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to migrate.
4. Click the Migrate drive button in the top panel list.
5. In the prompt, select the destination pool.
6. Click Migrate.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Migrated Drive Successfully

Migrate drive-name total-migration-time.

Failed to Migrate Drive

Migrate drive-name Failed at migration-failure-time: migration-destination-pool-name.

Migrate Drive to a Different Migration Pool

The migration pool did not receive your drive. Ask the system administrator to review the migration pool and temporarily migrate the drive to a different migration pool.

Migration Button Inactive in Migrate Drive Prompt

The "Migrate" button in prompt is inactive for certain migration pools.

Ask the System Administrator To Create A New Migration Pool

The migration pool has reached its full space quota or is unable to receive additional drive migrations. Contact the system administrator to create a new migration pool for your existing drive.

Migration Button Inactive in Migrate Drive Prompt

Migrate drive-name total-migration-time Failed at failure-time: the server took longer than 30s to reply.

View The Drive State in Drive Table

In the State column, review the drive status. If the drive is transferring to an existing migration pool, the transfer process cannot be interrupted or redirected to another migration pool until completion.

Bulk Email All Drive Users

bulk-action

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to bulk email users.
4. Click the Open Full Menu button by the selected drive in the left panel list.
5. Select Bulk email.
6. In the prompt, click Download to download all drive user emails to your local machine.
7. Click Copy to copy all drive user emails to your clipboard.
8. Once done, click Close.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Copied Drive Email List Successfully

Email list copied to the clipboard.

Transfer Ownership of the Drive to a Different User

bulk-action

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to transfer ownership.
4. Click the Open Full Menu button by the selected drive in the left panel list.
5. Select Transfer ownership.
6. In the prompt, enter the new drive owner name.
7. Click Transfer.

info

To transfer drive ownership, you must first grant Full-access to the drive to the user(s) you want to transfer ownership to.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Shared Drive Successfully

Shared with total-number-of-users user(s).

Unable to Transfer Drive Ownership to You from Drive Owner

The owner has not shared this drive read-write with anyone.

Ask the Drive Owner to Share the Drive with You in Read-Write

Ask the drive owner to share the drive with you in full-access (read-write) mode so that you can transfer ownership to yourself.

Unable to Transfer Drive Ownership to No Read-Write User

You have not shared the drive read-write with anyone.

Share the Drive Read-Write with At Least One User

Once you share the drive in full-access (read-write) mode with at least one user, you can transfer drive ownership to the shared user.

Unshare the Drive with a User

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to unshare with a user.
4. Click the Share button in the top panel.
5. In the prompt, filter the users by name or email.
6. Click the Delete button by the user you want to remove from sharing the drive with.
7. Once done, click Close.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Unshared Drive Successfully

user-name no longer has access.

Unable to Unshare Drive from Drive Owner

Failed to unshare file from user-name(owner): The drive owner's key may not be removed.

Ask the Drive Owner to Transfer Drive Ownership

Regardless of the user role, only the drive owner can unshare the drive with themselves in a drive deletion scenario.

To Drive Owner
To transfer drive ownership to a different drive user, follow the steps in  

Transfer Ownership of the Drive to a Different User

Change Own Share Status to Read-Only in a Shared Ready Drive

Failed to share drive: Only users who own keys to a Drive may add additional keys.

Ask the Drive Owner to Reshare Drive With You

The drive owner shares a ready drive with you so you can attach it to a VM as instructed. If you change your share status to read-only before attaching the drive, you will lose access and the drive will disappear from your drive list. Either attach the ready drive to a VM yourself or ask the drive owner to do it for you.

Unshare the Drive with All Users

bulk-action

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to unshare from everyone else.
4. Click the Open Full Menu button by the selected drive in the left panel list.
5. Select Unshare Drive from everyone else.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Unshared Drive From Everyone Else

Unshare drive-name from everyone else total-unsharing-time.

Delete the Drive

1. Go to the Virtual Machines icon in the top left taskbar.
2. Click the Drives section on the top left panel.
3. Select the drive to delete.
4. Click the Open Full Menu button by the selected drive in the left panel list.
5. Select Delete.
6. In the prompt, tick the drive(s) without errors to delete.
7. Type "Confirm" to confirm deletion.
8. Click Delete.

warning

You cannot delete drives actively attached to VMs. Shut down the VM first, then delete the drive.

Confirmations, Errors & Solutions

Deleted Drive Successfully

Delete drive-name total-deletion-time.

Undo Drive Deletion Successfully

total-undone-deletion-time Undone Deleting drive-name.

Drive Currently Attached

Drive currently attached to a VM.

Shut Down the VM

Shut down the VM, or ask the VM owner to shut it down.

To VM Owner

To shut down the VM, follow the steps in  

Shut Down a Virtual Machine.

Failed to Enter Confirmation Text

Type to Confirm.

Enter Confirmation Text

You must enter the same word "Confirm" in the Confirm field.

Unable to Delete Drives

All drives have errors.

Manually Remove Drives from VMs

1. Shut down all existing VMs where the drives with errors are located.
2. Open each VM separately, then remove the drives with errors.
3. Once done, verify the Drive currently attached to a VM error in the deletion drive prompt is cleared.
4. Proceed to drive deletion.