[SOLVED] Does LUKS encrypt on the fly?

linustalman · 11-12-2015, 03:06 PM

Hi LQ.

How does LUKS or other full disk encryptions work? After you boot up and enter your passphrase, after you login does the encryption work when you edit files or does it only kick in when you are logging off/shutting down to re-encrypt everything again?

smallpond · 11-13-2015, 08:15 AM

Drivers are layered. Reads from the layer below are decrypted as they pass through, writes from the layer above are encrypted as they pass through. So while data is in memory or in any layer above LUKS, it is unencrypted. In any layer below it is encrypted. That way you can run LUKS on top of a disk, a partition, a RAID set or an LVM without change to any other code.

linustalman · 11-13-2015, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smallpond

Drivers are layered. Reads from the layer below are decrypted as they pass through, writes from the layer above are encrypted as they pass through. So while data is in memory or in any layer above LUKS, it is unencrypted. In any layer below it is encrypted. That way you can run LUKS on top of a disk, a partition, a RAID set or an LVM without change to any other code.

Hi smallpond. Thanks for the info. My PC is still speedy even with full disk encryption so the overhead seems minimal.