Is it possible to install Arch with encrypt $HOME?

Question

Hello,
I'm going to buy a new laptop and i'd like to install Archlinux into it.
Ubuntu 9.10 gives you the choice to encrypt your home directory during installation.
Is it possible to do the same with Arch?
I read the WIKI about encryptions and it looks pretty "hard" to do it...?
Thanks in advance for your answers!

Answer 1

Dieter@be wrote:that information is outdated.  Since 2009.08 you can do encryption and lvm with the arch installer.
I did not see that while installing - the encrypted $HOME with ecryptfs I mean.
Did I overlook it?
(I used the netinstall.iso)
anyway - with the help of the two guides mentioned by anrxc (and another post on the subject here in the forums) I got it working.
After setting up a group "ecryptfs", adding the user to it, then having the PAM-Rules ready and the ecryptfs module loaded it was then as simple as typing:
ecryptfs-migrate-home -u $USER
The PAM-Rules as they are now:
/etc/pam.d/login
#%PAM-1.0
auth required pam_securetty.so
auth requisite pam_nologin.so
auth required pam_unix.so nullok
auth optional pam_ecryptfs.so unwrap
auth required pam_tally.so onerr=succeed file=/var/log/faillog
# use this to lockout accounts for 10 minutes after 3 failed attempts
#auth required pam_tally.so deny=2 unlock_time=600 onerr=succeed file=/var/log/faillog
account required pam_access.so
account required pam_time.so
account required pam_unix.so
#password required pam_cracklib.so difok=2 minlen=8 dcredit=2 ocredit=2 retry=3
password optional pam_ecryptfs.so
#password required pam_unix.so md5 shadow use_authtok
session required pam_unix.so
session optional pam_ecryptfs.so unwrap
session required pam_env.so
session required pam_motd.so
session required pam_limits.so
session optional pam_mail.so dir=/var/spool/mail standard
session optional pam_lastlog.so
/etc/pam.d/gdm
#%PAM-1.0
auth requisite pam_nologin.so
auth required pam_env.so
auth required pam_unix.so
auth optional pam_ecryptfs.so unwrap
auth optional pam_gnome_keyring.so
account required pam_unix.so
session required pam_limits.so
session required pam_unix.so
session optional pam_ecryptfs.so unwrap
session optional pam_gnome_keyring.so auto_start
password required pam_unix.so
password optional pam_ecryptfs.so
Seems to work well so far - only compiling software from AUR has failed sometimes - maybe some mount-options not suitable for "fakeroot"?
I just put the build-directory outside of the encrypted $HOME and symlinked to it - then it worked.
...my first 4 days with ARCH - coming from Gentoo, which I used solely for at least the last 4 years - and I like it and intend to stay with it
I did try Mint (Ubuntu) - thats how I came to want to have my $HOME encrypted with ecryptfs.
But I was not quite happy with it and now I'm here with ARCH.
Cheers
Last edited by jomen (2010-03-18 03:11:06)