[xubuntu-users] Help me understand please

[Roger]

On May 17, 2017 8:18:42 AM EDT, Joao Monteiro <jmonteiro257 at gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>My move from windows to xubuntu is final (lol)... preparing this
>samsung r20 to be my working laptop and all's going like a breeze :)
>
>I do of course have more than a million questions now, which I am quite
>happily answering through studying the best I can at my own pace. But I
>feel that what works best for me is to start from scratch, from the
>fundamentals, so I'm studying the Linux filesystem structure, etc. And
>there is one thing that is bugging me and I can't understand, so any
>help - when time permits it - will be more than welcome.
>
>OK, Windows 7 is forever gone and I made of the whole laptop a strictly
>Xubuntu Xfce machine. During the install, I used the option to encrypt
>the disk for extra security. When I boot up, it asks me for the
>password, I type it in, it says that crypt key was successful, voila,
>all works like a charm haha...
>
>But... when I then fired Gparted to se the structure graphically and
>start to try to understand it all, I noticed two things that are
>confusing me:
>
>1) The structure of my hard disk now shows as: (sorry, don't know yet
>how to take a screen shot and then paste it here... will get there soon
>I hope)
>
>/dev/sda1      ext2        /boot    487.00MiB
>/dev/sda2      extended             111.31GiB
>  /dev/sda5    crypt.luks           111.31GiB
>
>Ok, I understand that sda1 ext2 is the type of fylesystem and this is a
>487MiB boot partition
>
>But the sda5 partition which is the whole rest of the hard disk, shows
>graphically in Gparted as inside the sda2 extended partition, which is
>also the same size of sda5, coz it is the whole rest of the hard disk.
>
>So... why do I have sda2 and sda5? The way I see it, the crypt.luks is
>the encrypted partition, which is what I want for the whole disk, and
>for the little I understand so far, I have the boot and the extended
>partition. Why does it create an extended partition and then it creates
>an encrypted partition inside the extended one, of the exact same size?
>I would have expected to just have /dev/sda2 extended crypt.luks and
>not sda2 and sda5...
>
>Can anyone please find the patience to explain this to me when you have
>a chance? Thanks upfront
>
>2) On the /dev/sda5, I have a yellow warning triangle in front of it
>(in Gparted) and when I right click and select Information, it says:
>
>Warning: Linux Unified Key Setup encryption is not yet supported
>
>So I'm a bit confused here... does this mean that I'm only beneffiting
>from having an extra password safety at boot up time and the disk is
>actually not encrypted (which confuses me because when I give the
>correct password it says that crypt key has been successful), or is
>this referring to some sort of Key management system that is not yet
>supported, but the disk is indeed encrypted?
>
>Sorry bothering you with this, but just confused and to be absolutely
>honest, have been so busy hunting for a job that haven't had time yet
>to dig into the documentation... good this is got a job yesterday and
>I'm now getting this little old machine ready to be my working horse at
>work - damn, it works soooo much faster and better with xubuntu than it
>ever worked with windows, haha.... can't get enough of it, feel like a
>little boy with a spanky new shinny toy hahaha...
>
>Thank you upfront for any clarification on the above
>
>Kind regards to all
>
>Joao
>
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An aside: not from a thumb drive and look at the disk. You should not be able to see contents of 
/sda5, in intelligible form, proving that it's encrypted. (It might come up with a different identifier.)

I like Porteus, http://www.porteus.org
for quick and easy such as this but I always keep a Knoppix thumb or CD around for emergencise.

Enjoy Linux.
-- 
Sent from my Android device using K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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