Re: Linux disk partition encryption

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:25:40 +0000 (UTC)
T o n g <mlist4suntong@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:02:52 -0500, Celejar wrote:
> 
> >> Further, does disk encryption access the partition directly? I mean,
> >> does the 'cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdxn' care what type of partition
> >> (ext2/3, fat, etc) /dev/sdxn is?
> > 
> > You seem to be confusing partitions with filesystems here.  cryptsetup
> > works on raw partitions - the filesystems go on top of the encrypted
> > volume: /dev/sdxn -> luks volume -> filesystem
> 
> I know that the filesystems go on top of the encrypted volume. All that I 
> want to confirm is whether disk encryption access the partition directly, 
> as you put, "works on raw partitions". E.g., if I use partition tool to 
> set partition type to FAT32, what would happen?

I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure that cryptsetup won't care what
type the partition is marked as.  I'm no expert, but IIUC, those
"types" are just labels, a couple of bytes long, that tell the OS what
to expect on the partition, but I don't think it'll make much of a
difference when using cryptsetup.  I may be wrong, though.

Celejar
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