Wired Magazine - Dec 2003 - Article : CodeFellas

Quote " Our backend servers will all be based on Mandrake Linux, one of the few versions of Linux that offers encryption for both user data and the swap partition."

I just downloaded and installed Mandrake Linux 9.2 Download Edition, replacing my RedHat 9.0 installation, because of this article.

The MandrakeLinux website describes the features of ML 9.2 :

kernel-secure ( I don't know what this is)
Encrypted File System !!

How do I implement and configure Encrypted File System? I've looked all over the Web and I can't find any info about this anywhere..... I do my very best to find the answer in the forums before I ask the question.

PS.. I am the proverbial "noob", but I'm catching on quick. I may reinstall my system so I can use xfs instead of ext3.

please help and thanx,

scott

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/doc...stem-HOWTO.pdf

http://howtos.linuxbroker.com/howtor...tem-HOWTO.html

http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Loopback-En...tem-HOWTO.html

This was the search I put into Google Linux to find the above.

If all else fails, you could always post a question in the Mandrake Forum (Security). Hope it all goes well.

On Mandrake Linux they offer a kernel that is supposed to be more secure then a standard kernel. If you were to go kernel.org and download the source from there it is the plain jane source without any security features beyond what linus might put in general. Well there is another site (or there was not sure if kernel.org has the source for this in it now) that is a Linus kernel with encryption built in. Well they take that kernel and patch it a bit to there specs for security and voilia you have a Mandrake secure kernel which will show up as linux-secure on your boot manager.

Hope this explains it a bit for you and helps on this note.

In Mandrake, this is what should work :

- Go into the Mandrake partiton manager in the control centre (sorry, not at my Linux box and I can't remember the exact naming).
- Select the partition
- Click on expert
- Click on (I think) options
- One of the options is encrypted. Select this and you'll be prompted to enter a passphrase of at least 20 characters.

That will set it up. However, I think something is missing because I tried this yesterday and I got an error when trying to mount the partition. I had a quick check on the Mandrake forums and other people have had the error but I couldn't see a resolution.