LUKS2 with a strong hash.
It will take a while to decrypt but it will so be worth it. You only have to enter the password once.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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The standard route is to decrypt on boot. It happens after GRUB but before your display manager starts. IDK if there even is a setup that has you "decrypt on login". Thats sounds like your display manager (sddm for KDE) is decrypting system which is not possible IMO.
Unless your laptop somehow has multiple drives you'll want to use the "LVM on LUKS" configuration. 1 small partition for /boot. The rest gets LUKS encrypted, and an LVM group is put on the LUKS container. Or you could replace LVM with btrfs.
This will require wiping your system and reinstalling so you have some reading to do.
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt (aka LUKS)
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/System_configuration
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dm-crypt/Encrypting_an_entire_system#LVM_on_LUKS
The arch-install script in the live iso has options for full disk encryption.
If you suspend to RAM your system will stay unencrypted, because your ram is not encrypted. if you suspend to disk (aka hibernate) your system will be encrypted. You go through the boot loader when waking from hibernation but it just drops you off where you left off.
You need a swapfile for hibernation so make sure its inside the LUKS container.
+1 for LVM on LUKS
There is a way for just your home folder to be encrypted, Linux Mint has it as an option.
Looks like they use eCryptFS. Never heard of it before so thats neat. I can see using it on systems where you can't reinstall the system with Dm-crypt but it most cases I suspect Dm-crypt is a better alternative.
Idk if its faster or slower than Dm-crypt.
You technically could encrypt just your home but that's not the recommended approach.
okay I got my homework, I'll read on these.
Dreams of Code on YouTube has a video for a full start to finish arch install specifically including full disk encryption. While my computer is far from “slow” it’s also nothing crazy, and other than adding a second password to my bootup process, the decrypting really doesn’t take long.
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How old are we talking? If the CPU is >10 years old and/or some kind of ARM, it may not have hardware encryption acceleration, which means it'll happen in software. I did that once, it was horrible. lscpu |grep -i aes should probably tell you what you need to know.
If you don't have hardware encryption you can use --cipher xchacha20,aes-adiantum option when running cryptsetup to make it way faster than standard aes cipher in software.
It does give me a result so I do have "aes". How can I use it?
We're talking an Intel i5-8350U. it has 16GBs of ram and 500GB of SSD.
That's not a slow laptop. I've been daily driving worse for years.
To protect the data from random thief just browsing through the files I still use ecryptfs. It only encrypts the home directory, and the keys are derived from my accounts password, so no extra hassle.
The encryption is weak by the current standards, and wouldn't stop a determined attacker, but it's 100% better than nothing, and I've never noticed any performance problems.
That's pretty much my ThinkPad's Specs. Fine for almost all stuff I have to do on the go (expect CAD, don't try to run BricsCAD on the thing, it'll make you go crazy.)
I use full disk encryption on it, as on all my other devices, and it's fine, speed-wise. The SSD is NVME, not SATA, but I doubt the performance impact would be noticeable on a SATA SSD if that's what you've got.
mine's m.2 too. I tried systemd-homed, as of now it doesn't work as it should. Next I'll try disk/partition one but it'd be great to encrypt when sleeping, it's fine if it's hibernation
Full disk encryption always seemed the most sensible to me, but I'm not sure whether that needs to be decrypted after hibernation.
Encrypting and decrypting are complex operations that requires a lot from the hardware. The resources needed to encrypt and decrypt is proportionally correlated with the amount of files you're encrypting and decrypting.
That said, there are some alternatives
- Encrypt the whole filesystem
- Encrypt only your home folder
- Encrypt only the files you wanna
There is an app, Vaults, that allows you to create vaults to easily encrypt and decrypt folders. Take a look on this app
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With an encrypted disk, you only need to enter the encryption password when you shutdown or restart. Suspending and ~~sleep~~ lock screen don't need your encryption password.
Suspending to disk usually requires a password on resume.
That's true for hibernation, but not suspending. Hibernation stores everything in RAM onto the disk then shuts off the PC; to resume the system, you need to unlock the disk to access that data. Suspending doesn't turn off the computer, it keeps the CPU and RAM active.
On my Fedora system, I can hit the suspend button and get back into the OS without needing to type my encryption password, only my user password.
Ok so what do you call "sleep"? You've now listed suspending, sleeping, and hibernating as 3 different things.
I can sleep "sleep". All system components are still powered on at this stage, so it uses the most power. But at the same time it's the quickest to get back into your system. All that's really happening with sleep is that the screen turns off.
Then you have suspend. Laptops often first go to sleep but then suspend after a long period of inactivity to save battery.
Then you have hibernation. I don't think this is used that often nowadays.
I have never met anyone refer to "screen off" as "sleep".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_mode
The terms everybody else are using are: "sleep" = "suspend to RAM" = "S3" and "hibernation" = "suspend to disk".
Maybe systemd-homed is the solution you are looking for. The arch wiki has a page for it. And this can be better for your use case because only your home folder needs decryption and not the whole drive.
There is this to keep in mind since you are using KDE, but can be easily fixed: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-homed#Home_directory_remains_active_after_logging_out_of_Plasma
Sounds perfect. I'll need more sources to understand what it's doing and how to config it. Thanks!
Systemd has a good guide on how to use it https://systemd.io/HOME_DIRECTORY/
And they also have a guide on migrating a traditional user home to this. Do remember to take backups if going this route https://systemd.io/CONVERTING_TO_HOMED/
I personally used the arch wiki when I set it up https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-homed
There is not much config.
I think the command I used for my laptop was:
homectl create <name> --storage=luks --shell=/usr/bin/fish --member-of=wheel
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-homed#Creation
Gnome is working on a gui for this, but it will probably be a while until that is out. I feel like it is pretty safe to use the cli for this one.
Okay I just had a bit of freetime to test it: doesn't work.. if I log out or sleep, my home dir is still mounted. Meaning it's as good as nothing. Looked at the plasma fix, didn't work. I have a pretty good lead, that I need the topmost template from some wiki:
[Unit]
PartOf=graphical-session.target
Problem is, where in the world should I write this? I really don't expect you to know, but maybe I'm talking to a genius. The internet didn't help, or I used it wrong.
The template is supposed to be something that you put in your own systemd services. plasma-kwin_x11.service and plasma-kwin_wayland.service both already have it.
If I have to guess, it is probably a bug that will get fixed sometime in the future, meaning this is not a viable solution until then. Sorry for that.
Just as a last bit of troubleshooting, check if cat ~/.config/startkderc shows systemBoot = true. If it does not, run kwriteconfig6 --file startkderc --group General --key systemdBoot true. I doubt this will change much, but still worth trying.
If I get some free time, I will do some testing and let you know here
cat ~/.config/startkderc returns systemdBoot=true. I'm guessing you made a typo and this is correct. In this case I guess it just doesn't work on KDE, my next idea is LUKS on /home and hibernating instead of sleeping. Or I always wanted to try a tiling window manager... hm
systemdBoot is supposed to be true, not a typo. But yeah, I don't use plasma much so I don't really know how to solve the issue... Sorry for that!
No problem, thanks for the help. Also I got news is that I don't have to trust anyone with my laptop, I can keep it by my side after all. Still it's a security mesure, that I didn't solve in time. fun fact: LUKS on /home only breaks KDE. I really don't want to give up kde tho, I put on sway, realised that I needed to memorise console commands to change my fking volumes, so no thank you. I got spoiled by sweet UIs. it's so comfortable that everything is at one place.
Hehe, Thank you. But by the time I'm reading this I've already done it. Got stuck on a couple or roadblocks, but figured it out. I got scared when I didn't "enable" the service just "start" it. I'm not safe(-ish enough). :D
edit: well not the plasma fix. wiki said if it's a problem I need to start something, and that something should be on by default. So I didn't do anything, maybe that's a problem
LUKS2
That’s a hard thing to do for a bunch of reasons. There’s someone else who went into em so I’m not gonna do that.
Unless something’s seriously wrong, it would probably be better to just make your laptop boot faster.
So, what’s your laptop, what kind of disk does it have and how long does it take to boot/login?
Is your idea to do the easier decrypt on boot, and optimize the boot times?
I could probably do that, but someone else said that there is a decrypt on hibernate, seems better.
Yeah im thinking do “normal” decrypt on boot. It’ll be easier to troubleshoot and recover from if something goes wrong and there’s fewer pitfalls to deal with.
I also suspect that theres a problem with your computer because boot times have been pretty fast for many years now.
E: I just now saw that you’re using an eighth generation intel processor, plenty of ram and an ssd.
I have the same situation but a much older processor and my boot times from button press to desktop are ~10 seconds.
Unless your expectations for boot times are way out of line, you ought to have no problem using decrypt on boot.
One possibility is that your ssd has aged and is having to read those old system file blocks hundreds of times to get it right. Badblocks -n or spinrite level 2 or 3 scan fixes this problem.
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