Linux with encrypted root and swap with working hibernate to disk
Closed Published by scotth September 17th, 2009 in Computers, Internet, Linux, OS, Security, TipsI 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:
Scott Harney
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