Full disk encryption with Arch Linux footnotes

Arch   Linux

Pavel Kogan has an excellent guide to install Arch Linux with full disk encryption. I've taken the liberty of copying the instructions, adding a couple tweaks:

  1. Boot the Arch Linux installation medium.
  2. Run these commands (You may want to use different sizes for swap and root volumes):
    parted -s /dev/sda mklabel msdos
    parted -s /dev/sda mkpart primary 2048s 100%
    parted -s /dev/sda set 1 boot on
    cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda1
    cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda1 lvm
    pvcreate /dev/mapper/lvm
    vgcreate vg /dev/mapper/lvm
    lvcreate -L 4G vg -n swap
    lvcreate -L 15G vg -n root
    lvcreate -l +100%FREE vg -n home
    mkswap -L swap /dev/mapper/vg-swap
    mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/vg-root
    mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/vg-home
    mount /dev/mapper/vg-root /mnt
    mkdir /mnt/home
    mount /dev/mapper/vg-home /mnt/home
  3. Go through the software installation steps of the installation guide, skipping the Initramfs and Boot loader steps.
  4. Install GRUB: pacman --sync --noconfirm grub
  5. In /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:
    • Change the line starting with FILES= to FILES="/crypto_keyfile.bin"
    • On the line starting with HOOKS= add lvm2 encrypt just before filesystems.
  6. Find the UUID of /dev/sda1 by running basename "$(find -L /dev/disk/by-uuid -samefile /dev/sda1)"
  7. In /etc/default/grub:
    • Change the line starting with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX= to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="cryptdevice=UUID=[UUID]:lvm", replacing [UUID] with your own.
    • Add a line with GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y
  8. Run these commands:
    dd bs=512 count=4 if=/dev/urandom of=/crypto_keyfile.bin
    cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sda1 /crypto_keyfile.bin
    chmod 000 /crypto_keyfile.bin
    chmod -R 700 /boot
    mkinitcpio -p linux
    grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
    grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda
  9. If necessary, set up your BIOS to allow booting in CSM mode.

It also required me to enter the password using a QWERTY keymap. The instructions to add an alternative keymap to GRUB are rather involved, but I'll try to write them up if I go through with it.

No webmentions were found.