I was recently intrigued to learn that only half of the respondents to a survey said that they used disk encryption. Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows have been increasingly using encryption by default. On the other hand, while most Linux installers I’ve encountered include the option to encrypt, it is not selected by default.
Whether it’s a test bench, beater laptop, NAS, or daily driver, I encrypt for peace of mind. Whatever I end up doing on my machines, I can be pretty confident my data won’t end up in the wrong hands if the drive is stolen or lost and can be erased by simply overwriting the LUKS header. Recovering from an unbootable state or copying files out from an encrypted boot drive only takes a couple more commands compared to an unencrypted setup.
But that’s just me and I’m curious to hear what other reasons to encrypt or not to encrypt are out there.
Servers are harder and not preconfigued if you want unattended boot. The first key has to come from somewhere typically to unlock the root partition. The other keys can then be stored on that encrypted partition and are typically referenced by crypttab for auto unlock.
The first key can come from anywhere you want such as attached media like a flash drive, a over the network say via ssh, from a key server, or from the TPM. Or you could remotely connect to the console. There are bunch of how tos out there. It amounts to customizing the boot process and the initramfs. It is not simple. What makes sense depends on the threat model.
