Ubuntu's Ubiquity Installer Begins Adding ZFS Encryption Support

On the desktop side for Ubuntu 20.10 one of the changes we have been eager to see is ZFS encryption support on new installations in an easy-to-use manner and extending their existing OpenZFS file-system support. That ZFS encryption support has begun to land.

The support builds on the encryption capabilities of OpenZFS but makes it easy to deploy via the "Ubiquity" desktop installer for Ubuntu. Commits landing today in Ubiquity add the new option that besides performing an experimental ZFS install can also allow encryption to be enabled and then prompted for a security key, similar to the long-standing EXT4+LZM encrypted installations available from the Ubuntu installer.

There is also support added for encrypted swap on ZFS systems.

Once this ZFS encrypted work begins to settle down along with the other Zsys changes planned for Ubuntu 20.10, I'll be running through some benchmarks with this OpenZFS file-system encryption to see how it performs against the likes of EXT4+LVM on Ubuntu.