Re: [PLUG] Drive/Partition Encryption

["Aaron Mulder" <ammulder@alumni.princeton.edu>]

On 2/4/07, Art Clemons <artclemons@aol.com> wrote:
> I wonder if anyone has recomendations for encrypting a laptop partition.
>  I'm also interested in issues like recovery when for example a laptop
> is shutdown improperly.

I've used the SuSE default encryption on my home partition for the
last 5 releases or so.  It's generally worked pretty flawlessly.  Once
after a crash, it had some filesystem errors and didn't mount.  It was
a little scary to figure out the process to manually set up the device
for it so I could run the repair tool on it, but once I did that, the
repair worked OK and the only aftereffect was that my Thunderbird
profile was hosed (mail OK, settings toasted).

My main recommendation would be to make sure your partition doesn't go
too long without syncing, particularly if your laptop is susceptible
to crashing.  Other than that, make sure you know how to manually set
up and repair the partition in case it is ever necessary.

I've also sometimes wondered if it wouldn't be better to unmount the
partition during suspend and hibernate.  Most of the times my machine
is in transit it's not actually shut down, and it doesn't reliably
force a password prompt when resuming.  But I guess it's more
defending against the hard drive being released into the wild than
someone stealing it out of my car and trying to break into it on the
spot.

Thanks,
      Aaron

> At any rate I don't know anyone who encrypts so I'ld really appreciate
> suggestions and information.
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