Arch Linux

maxgiggs

Member

Registered: 2014-06-05

Posts: 32

Disk encryption & Backup: recommendations

Hi everyone! I never used disk encryption but, as recently I had to travel with my laptop for work,  I became concerned about my data in case my laptop could have been stolen (to be clear, I am not thinking about an attack by a professional cryptanalyst). I had a quick look at the ArchWiki but it is not clear to me what would be the most practical solution in my scenario.

My system is a Thinkpad T470 with a 256 NVMe SSD. The disk has only a separate boot partition (no separate home) and the system boots with EFISTUB (no bootloader). Probably the stacked filesystem encryption would be a solution, but I seem to understand that encrypting the whole home directory could cause some problems.  On the hand, I don't know if dm-crypt is hard to configure, if it can damage the SSD (or noticeably impact performance) or if it is compatible with my EFISTUB setup. Moreover, I seem to understand that I would have to reinstall the whole system in either case. What would you recommend?

Given the same context, what would you recommend for backup on an external hard drive? I was thinking about getting en external SSD, maybe with the ext4 filesystem, and using Déjà Dup with default encryption. By the way, if I make the backup now (unencrypted home), will I be able to restore my files after the dm-crypt/ECryptfs setup?

Slightly off-topic, what online password manager would you recommend? I tried Dashlane, but it is expensive and their Linux support is terrible.

Sorry for the long post and thank you in advance!

frostschutz

Member

Registered: 2013-11-15

Posts: 1,418

Re: Disk encryption & Backup: recommendations

LUKS is nice - and as simple as encryption can be. You set up LUKS, you enter a password when you boot, nothing else changes.

If you are completely unfamiliar with LUKS, how about making a test install on an unrelated machine or in a VM first. Baby steps...

maxgiggs

Member

Registered: 2014-06-05

Posts: 32

Re: Disk encryption & Backup: recommendations

LUKS is nice - and as simple as encryption can be. You set up LUKS, you enter a password when you boot, nothing else changes.

If you are completely unfamiliar with LUKS, how about making a test install on an unrelated machine or in a VM first. Baby steps...

That's reassuring. Will it be compatible with EFISTUB? Also, will suspend/resume work properly?

Last edited by maxgiggs (2019-07-23 11:04:44)

schard

Forum Moderator

From: Hannover

Registered: 2016-05-06

Posts: 1,988

Website

Re: Disk encryption & Backup: recommendations

That's reassuring. Will it be compatible with EFISTUB?

Yes.

Also, will suspend/resume work properly?

If your hardware supports it, also yes.

Last edited by schard (2019-07-23 11:08:15)

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macro_rules! yolo { { $($tokens:tt)* } => { unsafe { $($tokens)* } }; }