[vox-tech] recommended partition scheme for a dual boot windows 7/ubuntu machine?

[Vincenzo Ampolo]

On 11/03/2013 10:47 PM, Bill Broadley wrote:
> 
> I'm quite fond of btrfs.  Not brave enough to run it for my /home... 
> yet.  Happy so far?  Figure I'd wait until an OS distribution or two 
> standardizes on btrfs and the huge increase in adoptions works out the bugs.
> 

Yeah. I had it on 12.04 but had some issues with the bootsplash. Now
it's all good.

> In particular the occasionally disk full can become a major issue on 
> btrfs last I heard.
> 
> I noticed your /home is encrypted... why?  What is your use case?  The 
> reason I ask is that I generally recommend against it.  Linux in 
> particular will leak information into /tmp, /var, swap, and related 
> places.  Usually if it's worth encrypting, it's worth encrypting the 
> entire disk.

When it comes to encryption I tend to measure my use case and develop a
solution that it's not overkill.
Some people think that if the whole filesystem is not encrypted you are
not safe, some more paranoid will say that you should encrypt all your
disk and use a key stored in an usb drive to decrypt your pc.

My scenario is simple: in case they steal my pc again, i don't want that
my ssh keys, pgp keys, photos and personal documents can be accessed and
tampered.

Given that just encrypting my home directory is the most effective way
for me to handle this scenario. I don't have the hassle to type an
additional password at boot and only the documents in my /home get
encrypted/decrypted using my user password when i login. Thus i pay the
overhead of encrypting/decrypting only for my home which is what i
really care.

I do think that this scenario is common to any laptop user that can lose
or get robbed of his/her laptop and this is why i do recommend to
encrypt the home folder if you carry ssh/gpg keys and ssh conf.

Best,
-- 
Vincenzo Ampolo
http://vincenzo-ampolo.net