/home on separate partition & encryption

[Goh Lip]

On 05/16/2011 01:11 AM, Douglas S. Saylor wrote:
>     I'm starting to think I want to have files a separate /home
> partition. I'm trying to sort the +&  - of this set-up. Then there's the
> question of encryption. Questions: 1) how can this be done without
> reinstalling 11.04? 2) with this encryption, is it the "bullet-proof"
> type kinda thing even the govt can't crack, or is that something less
> than that?
>
>

Douglas, just some generalities and without going in detail of 
encryption which is possible.

o having a separate /home partition in itself is not difficult and is 
indeed better if it is to be encrypted.
o keeping the same /home for upgrades, say from 11.04 to 11.10 may cause 
some problems especially with changes from gnome2, unity or gnome3. I 
can speak only of kde and even with 'minor' kde version changes, there 
are configuration 'mismatch' and can cause breakdowns.

What I have done - and it is not a suggestion that you follow, just an 
example for consideration - is that I have a separate partition and I 
s-linked the files to the /home files of various OS's. That partition is 
manually included in the fstab of the various OS's. To take a simple 
example, the .mozilla in that partition is s-linked to same at /home of 
many OS's. Ditto for .opera, .thunderbird and others.

If system upgrades causes breakdowns, like say .kde, I'll remove the 
s-link and if by doing so, the system is restored, I'll create a new 
s-link and carry on.

This separate partition is not a data partition for which I have a very 
large partition which can easily be mounted or shared by any OS or 
distro and should (yes, should) have no problem in handling.

Hope this might (yes, might) help you.

Regards - Goh Lip