GRUB Now Supports EXT4 File-Systems With Encryption

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GRUB Now Supports EXT4 File-Systems With Encryption

The GRUB bootloader now supports file-systems making use of EXT4 file-system encryption but where the boot files are left unencrypted...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GRUB-EXT4-Partial-Encrypt

[zeroepoch]

If the boot files have to be unencrypted I'm not really sure how this is any different than a separate boot partition. After fully booting /boot is of course mounted so it would look the same to the end-user. The only advantage I can see is you don't need to decide how much space to give /boot or if you're running MBR you can stay under the 4 primary partition limit if that matters to you. Maybe there are other use cases, but for most users I don't think this is going to change much.

[oleid]

It will make sure you don't get bitten by grub if you just happen to experiment with encryption on your machine.

[Pajn]

If the boot files have to be unencrypted I'm not really sure how this is any different than a separate boot partition. After fully booting /boot is of course mounted so it would look the same to the end-user. The only advantage I can see is you don't need to decide how much space to give /boot or if you're running MBR you can stay under the 4 primary partition limit if that matters to you. Maybe there are other use cases, but for most users I don't think this is going to change much.

For one that did live with a way to small (300 MB) boot partition for little over a year and an encrypted LVM next to it, making it next to impossible to fix that without reformat (which I eventually did) this is surely welcome news.
Sure, having such a pity boot partition is just idiotic but I used the automatic option in Ubuntus installer and did not check the result and did then pay for my laziness...