On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Chris McQuistion <cmcquist...@watkins.edu> wrote: > For what it's worth, I'm not using LVM, currently. My partitions are just > run-of-the-mill partitions. I can set up a second disk and move data from > the old unencrypted partition to a new encrypted partition, if necessary. > Chris
I haven't kept up recently so there may be some auto-magic, but last I understood you will need to do something as you describe. 1. You will need some room to create an encrypted partition, whether on the same drive or another it does not matter to the process. (Though if it is a lot of disk space or lots of files, using a second drive would probably be faster.) 2. You mount the new (encrypted) partition. 3. You copy all the files from the unencrypted partition to the encrypted partition. (This can be copy, move, tar/untar, whatever you like as long as it handles any special files, permissions, attributes, ACL, etc. appropriately.) 4. You can then get rid of the unencrypted partition, resize the new partition, etc. as you like. Rereading John Eldredge's post, he pretty much reorders these. Let me add the normal unstated CYA steps to what he wrote: Make a (couple of) portable backups first (Ensure you can read the backups successfully) Wipe the old partitions Make and mount encrypted partitions Restore If you are looking for encrypting "(most of) the whole system", as Critch said you need an unencrypted boot partition and init image to get things started. You used to be able to make a file that contained an encrypted file system on it. You would then mount it on the loopback device. This was handy if you didn't want to encrypt a whole partition, just some data. However, I thought I read something about the powers that be getting rid of the loopback device... I have not tried this in many years, don't remember where I read the loopback device was going/gone, etc. Paul -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to nlug-talk@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en
