I'm waiting to 11.0 arrive but I'm planning on installing that on my laptop. I want to try encrypt my hard drives to make it more secure and to learn how that kind of process is done. Is there any good tutorials available for slackware and what would be the recommended partitioning scheme for this kind of thing?

I have 100Gb HD and I was planning on following using lvm:
/swap 512mb
/ 1Gb
#logical
/usr 15Gb
/home 60Gb
/var 10Gb
/tmp 5Gb
/opt 10Gb


Someone said once that using lvm makes it easier to encrypt partition. How come? Does encryption slow disk performance and what would be a good way to encrypt? All partitions and then home separetely or what?

Not intended as a RTM-style reply, but doing a LQ search for "disk encryption" should turn up a wealth of info IMHO.

Has anyone tried True Crypt? www.truecrypt.org

It sounds like to kind of app that you would want for this type of application. I haven't been able to try it yet because the linux version need a 2.6 kernel.

Just a thought

I used this guide to encrypt my home partition.

http://encryptionhowto.sourceforge.n...ion-HOWTO.html I basically have a dummy home directory with nothing in it on the root partition, and when I want to access my files, I mount the encrypted drive over it.

regards,
...drkstr

Hey, thank you for your help. I look into those when I have more time in my hands. Especialy the truecrypt seems quite interresting choice.
Currently trying to figure out how to be bestman for buddy's wedding, try to congratulate my dad on his 50th birthday and be sober enough day after wedding for my grandfathers 80th birthday... I had to fly back to Finland for this and I have only 3 full days to use in all of this.


Perhaps back in Ireland I will delve more deeply into this case. I'll probably use Knoppix until the new slack arrives as I don't get power on my USB-HD as it uses different socket than what is available.

I use truecrypt, not to encrypt complete partitions but to have an encrypted file containing a filesystem where I keep my sensitive data. Encrypting your whole partition is possible if you want.
Indeed it requires a 2.6 kernel, and also the device-mapper package you'll find in Slackware's "/testing/packages/lvm2/" directory.

My package for truecrypt can be found here: http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/truecrypt/ and I wrote a Wiki page on using it, some time ago: http://www.slackware.com/~alien/doku...inux:truecrypt

The cool aspect of truecrypt is that there is also a version of the software for MS Windows, and their encryption file format is identical - so you can for instance create your encrypted containerfile on a USB stick, carry it around with you and use it on both Windows and Linux computers.

Eric

I think I try the truecrypt once I have enough time to truly delve into it. Thanks for the wiki entry, seems quite usefull after quick glance.

Thanks for the slackbuild and wiki info, Eric. I'm now using truecrypt for disk encryption.

I ran into a little trouble when trying to create a container file with a different format than FAT. Some files like database files require certain ownership/permission settings which don't work with FAT, so I needed a linux FS.

The obvious "truecrypt --filesystem ext3 -c volume.tc" seemed to work just fine, but after creation I could not mount the volume with "... --filesystem ext3 ...". It would complain that it could not find an ext3 file system.

To get it to work, I created a volume without a filesystem. Then map the volume with "truecrypt volume.tc". Look in /dev/mapper to see where the volume was mapped (probably /dev/mapper/truecrypt0). Then you can use mkfs.whatever to create the filesystem you want. Since it's already mapped, you then mount it with the standard "mount /dev/mapper/truecrypt0 /mnt/point".

I hope this saves someone some head-scratching. Now a question: Does journaling work with truecrypt?

Brian

I once encrypted my whole HDD ... wasn't the best idea tho ... it does waste a good amount of system resources. I mean, it's gotta encrypt and decrypt everything on the fly. I found it much more prudent to make a separate encrypted partition for sensitive data (like Alien Bob does).

As for journaling, well I'd imagine if the encrypted drive is not mounted, journaling cannot occur ... as for when it is mounted ... dunno, maybe. (maybe not)