Full drive encryption, what to use as a default system?

evan18h · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Dec 2004 Posts: 83

My system is now using DM-Crypt/LUKS for root, swap and home. I also boot from a USB drive.

My question is this, what should I have as a default to boot if my USB drive is not used? I was thinking it would be a
good idea to have some kind of dummy boot sequence that looked like Windows XP was loading then "Blue Screens"
to give a false impression that the machine is not worth looking into further (don't want to bring attention to my encrypted
drives)...and it's better than "No Operating System Found".

How could this be accomplished?

I guess an alternative would be a minimal rescue linux install.

What would you use?
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A day without sunshine is like night.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2010 10:17 pm Post subject:

evan18h,

Have grub boot into an initrd that only gives a BSOD.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

evan18h · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Dec 2004 Posts: 83

NeddySeagoon,

Thanks for the suggestion, could you elaborate a bit on how to do that in an initrd?

Maybe some kind of halted bootsplash, or a program that renders to the framebuffer? Neither of which I have ever done before, but willing to try

EDIT:
For some reason I was thinking I needed an image....BSOD is just text with a background, so I'm going to try using either console colors or ncurses.
I'll let you know how it goes!
_________________
A day without sunshine is like night.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2010 7:26 pm Post subject:

evan18h,

You have it. I've not done it either.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

avx · Advocate Joined: 21 Jun 2004 Posts: 2152

frostschutz · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2005 Posts: 2977 Location: Germany

For me, it actually does boot Windows 7 when the USB boot key is not attached, so by all means and purposes it looks like a normal gaming PC - which it is if it's not running Linux - so it's completely unspectacular unless of course someone digs deeper and finds the extra hard disks. I wouldn't go for the fake OS / bluescreen approach since that makes people curious... why would anyone have a PC at home that does not even work? It would make more sense to have it boot into some kind of Linux Live system which is fully functional except for root permissions.