[ale] Pros & cons on encrypting disks

[Scott Castaline]

Jim Kinney wrote:
> Can't encrypt the boot partition otherwise no kernel available to run 
> the decryption :-)

Figured that was the reason, not even sure why I even had any doubts to 
that.
> 
> I ran Fedora 8 with added drive encryption. No problem (the first 
> install was tedious but it all worked fine). I then up0graded that 
> laptop to Fedora 9. During the install it recognized the encrypted 
> drive, prompted for the password for the key, unlocked and upgraded 
> flawlessly (OK - So I had previously removed all the Livna repo 
> multimedia stuff to avoid headaches).
> 
> Later backed off personal data, wiped the drive and installed F9 from 
> scratch. No problems. Just reworked the machine from scratch with F10 
> 64-bit as I upgraded to 4GB ram. Once the bios patch went on the box has 
> performed well. No flawlessly - there are bugs in the suspend, 
> hibernate, power-management and the gnome session manager is rather 
> unstable (Grr!).  But the disk encryption is has been so far rock solid.
> 
> Admin on a disk encryption is a bigger challenge. Must have a backup of 
> the keys and know the encryption scheme and also must know the password. 
> Current scheme allows multiple passwords so there can be an admin user 
> and other normal users. So normal users can boot the box without knowing 
> the admin password.
> 
Any suggested reading material, something that isn't required reading 
for a CSE major? I'm from the hardware dungeon(s).

> Disk encryption is/will-be a big thing to be comfortable working with.
> 
> On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 12:42 PM, Scott Castaline <hscast at charter.net 
> <mailto:hscast at charter.net>> wrote:
> 
>     Just want to get a feel for the pros and cons of encrypting my disk(s).
>     I just created a VM to install Fedora 10 before upgrading my system. I
>     chose to use the encryption option to see how it worked in the install
>     process and how it behaves once installed. I did notice that the boot
>     partition cannot be encrypted. Is this just a Fedora thing or is that
>     the encryption key is not present until the initial boot process is
>     completed? So what are the pros and the cons to this?
> 
>     TIA
>     Scott
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> 
> 
> -- 
> -- 
> James P. Kinney III              
> 
> 
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