I have once again installed my laptop at work. I don’t usually report such incidents. This time it was way too easy to not to mention. I don’t know if there was decent documentation for encrypting the root partition for Ubuntu Edgy. I know there is some documentation somewhere for Feisty, but I didn’t actually find it easily among the first results of my single Google search. Instead I read the initramfs scripts and learned to give the correct boot parameters. I still didn’t find out how to encrypt my swap and still be able to hibernate.
Encryption has for a long time been on top of my wish list for Ubuntu. It seems that the actual boot scripts are in place, even though they remain in the universe repository. Not getting my own scripts for encryption every time surely helps me a lot but I still hate installing a new system via debootstrap because there clearly is no way of getting the initial configuration right. Meeting Paul Sladen at Assembly Winter computer event increased my cravings as he convinced me to try to power management on my laptop. My view of power management changed: this time it seemed to work. Now I want hibernation for my laptop.
The state of encrypted root partition and swap seems closer than ever. Installing on an encrypted partition clearly isn’t done yet and the package is still floating in the universe. I still feel excited. These baby steps prove that someone has been trying to solve my favorite problem. Having the computer not crash when I close the lid also was something that brought a smile on my face. It has been two weeks and I am still waiting for the inspiration to look into swap encryption. I wish I had the time and will power to solve this issue once and for all. Making different scripts for different versions of Ubuntu just doesn’t work.