Secure laptop with SuSE 9.1?

From: Christian Lederer (christianlederer_at_web.de)
Date: 06/29/04 

Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 05:57:28 +0200

Hi,

in order to have a secure notebook i want to to encrypt /home, /tmp,
/var and the swap, and i am looking most convenient and secure way
to achieve this.

If i create encrypted partitions for /home, /tmp and /var using Yast2,
i will have to type the password(s) three times at each boot.
Supposing i use the same password for these partitions, is there
an easy way to mount these partitions typing the password only once?
Is it perhaps possible, to attach these partitions to the same loop
device?

I found out, that a can use encrypted swap by adding the options
loop=/dev/loop?,encryption=twofish256 in my /etc/fstab.
In this case, at each boot will recreate an encrypted swap using
a password which is derived from /dev/urandom.
But does /dev/urandom contain enough randomness at boot time in order
to create a secure password?

Or is there a possibility to encrypt the root partition, if one has a
separate boot partition and includes the encryption module in the
initrd?

Any hints would highly be appreciated!

Thanks
Christian

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