Opening Mac formatted Truecrypt in Linux / Ubuntu

I've got some portable HDs to which I've applied Full Disk Encryption using Truecrypt, basically its my off-site backup. Thing is, "inside" the Truecrypt volume they are formatted for use on my Mac, which I don't want to not use anymore.

So how to use on my Dell XPS Ultrabook which has Ubuntu 12.04 on it?

First, install the HFS+ tools:

sudo apt-get install hfsplus hfsprogs hfsutils

Then install Truecrypt. Get the installer from www.truecrypt.org/downloads

When the file truecrypt-7.1a-linux-x64.tar.gz is downloaded, extract it, and then make the install file executable:

chmod +x  truecrypt-7.1a-setup-x64

and then run

./ truecrypt-7.1a-setup-x64 

This installs Truecrypt into the Applications > Accessories menu

Plug in the external drive, and wait a few seconds while the USB system recongises it. Then you can launch Truecrypt just like on OSX.

Click "Select Device" 

 find the device, select "OK". You might need to enter your admin password.

Back in the main window click "Mount", put in your key and the device is mounted, usually in /media/

From there its transparent.

NB:

1.  This gives you read access to your files, which is fine for my purposes at the moment.

2.  You can also install Truecrypt by using a 3rd party PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:michael-astrapi/ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install truecrypt