Nix Bits

I recently installed Linux Mint (ubuntu with some goodies) on a laptop and wanted an encrypted whole disk. In order for this to be truly secure, you need encrypted swap. Well most of the HOWTOs for encrypting swap use a randomized key. This breaks hibernate to disk for laptops because the linux kernel has no way to decrypt a randomized cipher (of course). So I referenced a separate howto and combined the two approaches. I can now hibernate to disk using an encrypted swap partition that is protected with a passphrase in the same as way as root and home partitions.

It should be apparent this howto is non-trivial.  The config file changes I supply in it are in diff -u format so this is deliberately written for a technical audience. My research indicates that there is some interest in getting this into distributions in a more elegant fashion, but that kind of deep integration takes time. I needed something that works for me now.

Anyway, here’s the link in the Linux Mint user forums: