[ale] Filesystem encryption

[Greg Freemyer]

Does using an encrypting hard drive count?

I'm not sure about servers, but lots of laptops now have harddrives
with built in encryption engines.

The bios on those laptops tend to ask the user for a password (or
fingerprint) that is fed into the drive so it can be booted from.

Here's the first one I found via google:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-71843.html

Greg

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Jim Butler
<jimbutler1234567890 at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Hi Linux People!
> I have a question and am looking for some experienced suggestions.
> I saw a server recently that had filesystem encryption applied to the
> entire root filesystem volume.
> Although I am not sure, I do believe that the encryption scheme probably
> was not loopback (cryptoloop) because the server did not have a key
> stored on an external device. My understanding of loopback encryption is
> that the kernel and initrd have to be stored on at least some kind of
> un-encrypted media in order to boot to at least a small level sufficient
> to ask for the pass-key to decrypt/mount the filesystem.
> If the encryption scheme wasn't loopback encryption, what could it have
> been? What ways are popular right now for encrypting an entire root
> filesystem without using a thumbdrive or other external storage??
> If someone can help me identify what this was, maybe I can read up on it
> and implement it on one of my own servers.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Jim Butler
> Linux Network Administrator.
>
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Greg Freemyer
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