If you tick the encryption box during install, you will have to enter the decrypt password at every boot and that means that if the power goes out for long enough (UPS doesn’t keep the server up for hours), I (and my family) will not have access to the self hosted stuff until I’ll be home and this is why I encrypt only the data partition and not the boot one.
I may be missing something in your use case. As long as you have the port forwarded you can decrypt from anywhere. Use pub key auth and you’re good to go
You’re just missing the part where I want to be on vacation without the need to find a decent Internet connection to boot my server because the power went off.
What’s the plus of encrypting the OS partition too?
Fair enough. Every service I run depends on encrypted data, so starting the machine without decrypting isn’t worthwhile in my case. I have to decrypt to get everything back up after power loss anyway.
Main advantages I’m aware of for full disc encryption are encrypted swap and system config. Overkill for some use cases so YMMV, but wanting to point out that decrypting at boot can be done.
Thanks for your point of view.
All of my services are containers that have config and data folder bind mounted from an encrypted partition. After power on, a script download from a website half of the key needed to decrypt data, the other half is in the boot partition.
In this way if my server gets stolen I can delete the half key stored on the website and the data disk can’t be decrypted.
About swap, you’re right, but that doesn’t worry me at all since I don’t think that there’s anybody that would goes into that trouble just for my data. If someone is able enough and takes the trouble to read it, I guess that’s going to be the last of my problem: it would mean that I’m already in biiiiig troubles! 😆
If you tick the encryption box during install, you will have to enter the decrypt password at every boot and that means that if the power goes out for long enough (UPS doesn’t keep the server up for hours), I (and my family) will not have access to the self hosted stuff until I’ll be home and this is why I encrypt only the data partition and not the boot one.
You can decrypt via ssh at boot. I used dropbear to accomplish that on my machine
That’s interesting, but that won’t help if I’m away or on vacation on the other side of the world
I may be missing something in your use case. As long as you have the port forwarded you can decrypt from anywhere. Use pub key auth and you’re good to go
You’re just missing the part where I want to be on vacation without the need to find a decent Internet connection to boot my server because the power went off. What’s the plus of encrypting the OS partition too?
Fair enough. Every service I run depends on encrypted data, so starting the machine without decrypting isn’t worthwhile in my case. I have to decrypt to get everything back up after power loss anyway.
Main advantages I’m aware of for full disc encryption are encrypted swap and system config. Overkill for some use cases so YMMV, but wanting to point out that decrypting at boot can be done.
Thanks for your point of view. All of my services are containers that have config and data folder bind mounted from an encrypted partition. After power on, a script download from a website half of the key needed to decrypt data, the other half is in the boot partition. In this way if my server gets stolen I can delete the half key stored on the website and the data disk can’t be decrypted. About swap, you’re right, but that doesn’t worry me at all since I don’t think that there’s anybody that would goes into that trouble just for my data. If someone is able enough and takes the trouble to read it, I guess that’s going to be the last of my problem: it would mean that I’m already in biiiiig troubles! 😆