[[Category:Tutorials]]
LVM is a tool for logical volume management which includes allocating disks, striping, mirroring and resizing logical volumes. With LVM, a hard drive or set of hard drives is allocated to one or more physical volumes. LVM physical volumes can be placed on other block devices which might span two or more disks.
LUKS is the standard for Linux hard disk encryption. By providing a standard on-disk-format, it does not
only facilitate compatibility among distributions, but also provides secure management of multiple user passwords.
LUKS stores all necessary setup information in the partition header, enabling you to transport or migrate data seamlessly.
This article assumes that this will be the only operating system installed. Also wherever you see '''''sdx2''''' it is referring to the single large partition (probably /dev/sda2) made in the first step. It also assumes you know your way around the slackware installer.
Swap space setup is documented here but note its only needed if you plan to hibernate e.g. a laptop.
Boot the installer. Login as '''''root''''' and run
<code>cfdisk</code>
What you’re doing here is setting up the partitions. Essentially, we’re dividing up the hard drive into a few logical partitions so that certain things can run in certain places, and not be affected by others. In order to create a bootable encrypted drive there needs to be a small partition that is not encrypted, it’s unencrypted and readable, so the computer can use it to figure out how to start the operating system.
The first partition to make is a boot partition. Delete every other existing partition (if there are any) and write (again, assuming this will be your only OS). Next, select new and create a primary partition that is relatively small, I usually do 1G (which is rather large but i often juggle multiple kernels). Select ''Beginning'', which puts the partition at the front of the disk. DO NOT forget to make the first partition bootable, otherwise the installation won’t know to use this partition to install the boot scripts and such.
Next, create another partition with the remaining space. Follow the same steps, except do not make it bootable and use the rest of the available space. Just hit enter when it asks how much space to use. After you’ve done this, make sure you go down and select '''''write''''' to ensure the changes are made. Then exit cfdisk.
It's a good idea for you to rewrite the entire large partition with random data. This is so computer forensics folks cannot determine where encryption starts and stops, making it harder to find out a way to circumvent the encryption and stuff. To do this, run
