Ubuntu's Ubiquity Gains Home Encryption Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu's Ubiquity Gains Home Encryption Support

Ubuntu 7.10 had introduced support for install-time encryption to provide a fully encrypted LVM. However, this feature was only available through Ubuntu's alternate CD installer and not Ubiquity, Ubuntu's popular LiveCD installer...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=Njk5Mw

[ethana2]

If I'm going to consider encrypting my ~/, I'm going to want to know that it's still easy enough to get to my data from a LiveCD; that is, click on the volume and a thing pops up that says 'encrypted volume requires a password to be mounted' so I can just type it in and I'm good to go.

I'm also going to want to know that typing in the wrong password will simply fail to mount and not like corrupt anything..

I'd really just rather be able to have Ubuntu store sensitive data in ~/Private, so I don't have a performance hit with configuration files and settings and whatnot; If someone steals my laptop, I'll have bigger concerns than them seeing my random pictures and school documents and .tar.gz archive collection, really.

[Zhick]

I'd say encrypting ~ is the way to go. I see no point in encrypting the whole root... I can't think of any sensitive information stored anywhere except in ~ (well, and /tmp and swap, so you should propably encrypt those too).
At least that's how I've set up my system.

[yungchin]

It's not just about protecting your information...

I'd say encrypting ~ is the way to go. I see no point in encrypting the whole root... I can't think of any sensitive information stored anywhere except in ~ (well, and /tmp and swap, so you should propably encrypt those too).
At least that's how I've set up my system.

If you run your own mail server, that may keep stuff under /var, and your sshd private-key stuff is under /etc I believe...

I mean, I think it is much easier to just encrypt everything than to think about what to encrypt. It does cause some decryption overhead but, well, I guess that helps the chip vendors push dual-core cpus...

Also, it makes it just a little bit harder for someone with physical access to your machine to replace system binaries without you noticing.