Encrypted Root File System During Install in openSuse 10.3
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008
Introduction and Motivation
Most laptop users do not begin to think about the problems associated with laptop theft until after they first theft occurs. If the laptop happened to contain the source code for a new product, or company confidential documents, or the notes for an newspaper article on political corruption, or maybe just a private love letter, then there is a potential for catastrophe if the data falls into the wrong hands.
To counter the potentially damaging affects of laptop theft, one can either choose not to use a laptop, use hardware encryption devices, or use software encryption to protect the data. The latter approach is particularly attractive because a software solution is more flexible than a hardware approach and with a modern CPU, most users will not notice the performance penalty associated with on-the-fly software encryption/decryption.