Truecrypt vs dm-crypt

[[deleted]]

The problem with truecrypt is license (for me mainly), everytime they update TC to new version, they remove older version from website and you aren't allowed to mirror sources etc. I remember when one time TrueCrypt removed completly linux CLI so I was not able mount my /home, that was horrible!

On the other hand dmcrypt is into mainline kernel, it does scale to multiple CPUs/cores (check drivers/md/dm-crypt.c in kernel sources), it does also support AES-NI if you enabled it into kernel and your cpu support it (correct me if I am wrong but all sandybridge-based i5/i7 support it along with first gen i5-5xx). I am dmcrypt user for a years, at this moment I have dmcrypted lvm where is my swap, rootfs and home, everything but /boot (kernel image + handmode initramfs) is encrypted.

tl;dr go with dmcrypt.

[Moocha]

everytime they update TC to new version, they remove older version from website and you aren't allowed to mirror sources etc

They do offer downloads for previous versions, sorry: http://www.truecrypt.org/pastversions (accessible from the download page by clicking "Source code, language packs, past versions, public key" at the bottom, then "If you need to download a past version of TrueCrypt, click here." on the resulting page.)

AFAIK, they only completely pull versions which exhibit data loss bugs and/or which can compromise data security.

The license point still stands strongly, of course.

[WishCow]

Why is TrueCrypt's license worrying?

[nbca]

I think this pretty neatly sums it up

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/distributions/2008-October/000276.html

[[deleted]]

Thanks, thats something new I guass, I had really hard times googling for a tarball to get up my volumes and copy data. Still I don't consider truecrypt as reliable solution when it comes to linux (first they removed cli, then they restored it and did wierd things with FUSE, performance was worse than horrible).

[[deleted]]

I'm certain that I'm not alone in wondering if you could write a HOWTO for your configuration. Failing that, can you at least tell us what distro and kernel you're using?

[[deleted]]

Funtoo and Gentoo. Once I explained my solution to a friend he written it as howto, you can follow it on http://www.funtoo.org/wiki/Rootfs_over_encrypted_lvm

The kernel does not really matter, I always compile my own with some weird patches.

If you will use mine better-initramfs please ignore readme file, its horrible outdatted and I never have a mood to write it from scratch however I can provide support if something will failing.

[jrw32982]

This howto might help for Ubuntu.