I'm considering encrypting the contents of my laptop, which runs Ubuntu 10.04 and has an ext4 + swap, and I'm wondering what the best options are here. I'm aware of:
- TrueCrypt: either block-level encryption or virtual device within a file
- ecryptfs: FS-level encryption
- dm-crypt: block-level encryption
- Loop-AES: block-level encryption
- encrypted LVM: block-level encryption
I'm trying to get a taste for what the best options are (or what the trade-offs are) if I want to encrypt at least /var, /home, /tmp, /etc, and swap (think that pretty much covers most sensitive data, assuming I'm not installing secret applications into /usr or anything). Some guiding questions:
- How big is the impact on both performance and battery life? What about performance on SSDs?
- In my case, can I set it up without having to set up a new system - just take my existing ext4/swap and encrypt them? (Preferably without requiring some intermediate storage, but more importantly, preferably not requiring me to reinstall the OS?)
- Are any of the above recommended over others? (At least going forward, on Ubuntu)? Any that are obsolete/deprecated?
I realize there are previous discussions on disk encryption in Linux but they tend to only cover subsets of the above options and questions. Thanks for any guidance.
encfs
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