I am a big fan of linux and like trying out new distros now and then. I usually have my home folders and roots in a lvm atop an encrypted partition, but this tends to become cumbersome with every initramfs creation process being more alien than the last one. I value privacy, but most of my valuable information or personal is stored in the home folders. Moreover, I partitioned using GPT, so multiple partitions are not that hard to setup even outside a lvm. So the question is: Is root crypting and lvm-ing of / worth it, especially with all the early userspace hassle I have to deal with?
Any reason for encrypted /?
lvm;encryption;root filesystem
First of all the hassle with encrypted root and early userspace is typically already handled by your distribution (as far as i know Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and OpenSUSE support encrypted root out of the box). That means you don't have to care for the setup itself.One reason for encrypting / is just to be sure you don't leak any information at all. Think about programs writing temporary data into /tmp, log files containing sensitive information like username/passwords in /var/log or configuration files containing credentials like a password in /etc/fstab or some commands in the shell history of the root user.Using LVM instead of partitions has one great benefit, you can easily resize/rename/remove logical volumes without the need to re-partition your disk itself, it is just more convenient than using partitions (GPT or MBR)