Arch Linux

gaenserich

Member

From: Michigan

Registered: 2010-06-07

Posts: 119

Website

Better Performance: ecryptfs or luks via loopback

Hi all,

I'm looking to encrypt a partition on my very old (circa 2000) desktop box cum server. It has an old pata disk drive that holds the / partition (ext4). The partition, however, is really big for a / partition, so I was hoping to reclaim some of that space for an encrypted home directory. My two possible methods to do so:

1) Make a pre-sized file on the / filesystem that I then access via loop-back and encrypt with Luks as detailed here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm … oop_device
-Which filesystem would work best on top of this whole stack,e.g. btrfs (with lzo compression?), ext4, or something else

2) Use ecryptfs on top of the / ext4 filesystem, as detailed here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ECryptfs

My main question: which of these two options would probably have the best performance? I know Luks tends to be, on the whole, faster (at least when encrypting a block device instead of a loop-back device), but does this advantage disappear when stacked via a loop-back device?

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