Bjarne Verschorre

Doing it through an GUI is simple, these steps are for the terminal.

Why encrypt your drives?

• Privacy: If someone steals your computer, they can’t access your data.
• Security: If someone steals your computer, they can’t access your data.

Encrypting a partition

You can get the device name of the partition you want to encrypt by running lsblk or fdisk -l.

1. Format the partition with LUKS:

   • $ sudo cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sdX1
     • Replace /dev/sdX1 with the device name of the partition you want to encrypt.

2. Open the encrypted partition:

   • $ sudo cryptsetup open /dev/sdX1 <name>
     • Replace <name> with a name for the partition (eg enc_drive).

3. Create a filesystem on the encrypted partition:

   • $ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/<name>

Mounting an encrypted partition

You are probaly going to want to mount the encrypted partition after you’ve encrypted it.

1. Open the encrypted partition (if it’s not already open):

   • $ sudo cryptsetup open /dev/sdX1 <name>
     • Replace <name> with the name of the encrypted partition.

2. Create a mounting point and mount the encrypted partition:

   • $ sudo mkdir /mnt/<name>/
   • $ sudo mount /dev/mapper/<name> /mnt/<name>/

Unmounting the drive

It’s different from unmounting a regular partition. You need to unmount the partition and close the encrypted partition.

1. Unmount the partition:

   • $ sudo umount /mnt/<name>/

2. Close the encrypted partition:

   • $ sudo cryptsetup close <name>