[Bug 1857398] Re: ubiquity should support encryption by default with zfsroot, with users able to opt in to running change-key after install

[Mike Gerdts]

This is a very interesting idea, but care should be applied when
combined with cloud (disk) images.  In particular, I worry that if an
encrypted disk image is distributed that the well-known passphrase could
be used to get the master key from any pristine copy of the disk image.
In effect, the master key becomes an open secret.  Thus, any instance
derived from this disk image would be fairly easy to read regardless of
knowledge of the wrapping key.

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Title:
  ubiquity should support encryption by default with zfsroot, with users
  able to opt in to running change-key after install

Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in zfs-linux package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  zfs supports built-in encryption support, but the decision of whether
  a pool is encrypted or not must be made at pool creation time; it is
  possible to add encrypted datasets on top of an unencrypted pool but
  it is not possible to do an online change of a dataset (or a whole
  pool) to toggle encryption.

  We should therefore always install with encryption enabled on zfs
  systems, with a non-secret key by default, and allow the user to use
  'zfs change-key -o keylocation=prompt' after install to take ownership
  of the encryption and upgrade the security.

  This is also the simplest way to allow users to avoid having to choose
  between the security of full-disk encryption, and the advanced
  filesystem features of zfs since it requires no additional UX work in
  ubiquity.

  We should make sure that
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1857040 is fixed
  first in the kernel so that enabling zfs encryption does not impose an
  unreasonable performance penalty.

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