# dm-crypt/Drive preparation

< Dm-crypt

Back to Dm-crypt.

Before encrypting a drive, it is recommended to perform a secure erase of the disk by overwriting the entire drive with random data. To prevent cryptographic attacks or unwanted file recovery, this data is ideally indistinguishable from data later written by dm-crypt. For a more comprehensive discussion see Disk encryption#Preparing the disk.

## Secure erasure of the hard disk drive

In deciding which method to use for secure erasure of a hard disk drive, remember that this needs only to be performed once for as long as the drive is used as an encrypted drive.

Warning: Make appropriate backups of valuable data prior to starting!
Note: When wiping large amount of data, the process will take several hours to several days to complete.
Tip:

- The process of filling an encrypted drive can take over a day to complete on a multi-terabyte disk. In order not to leave the machine unusable during the operation, it may be worth to do it from a system already installed on another drive, rather than from the live Arch installation system.
- For SSDs, as a best effort to minimize flash memory cache artifacts, consider performing a SSD memory cell clearing prior to instructions below.

### Generic methods

For detailed instructions on how to erase and prepare a drive consult Securely wipe disk.

### dm-crypt specific methods

The following two methods are specific for dm-crypt and are mentioned because they are very fast and can be performed after a partition setup too.

The cryptsetup FAQ mentions a very simple procedure to use an existing dm-crypt-volume to wipe all free space accessible on the underlying block device with random data by acting as a simple pseudorandom number generator. It is also claimed to protect against disclosure of usage patterns. That is because encrypted data is practically indistinguishable from random.

#### dm-crypt wipe on an empty disk or partition

First, create a temporary encrypted container on the partition (`sdXY`) or the full disk (`sdX`) to be encrypted, e.g. using default encryption parameters and a random key via the `--key-file /dev/{u}random` option (see also Random number generation):

    # cryptsetup open --type plain /dev/sdXY container --key-file /dev/random

Second, check it exists:

    # fdisk -l

    Disk /dev/mapper/container: 1000 MB, 1000277504 bytes
    ...
    Disk /dev/mapper/container does not contain a valid partition table

Wipe the container with zeros. A use of `if=/dev/urandom` is not required as the encryption cipher is used for randomness.

    # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/container status=progress

    dd: writing to ‘/dev/mapper/container’: No space left on device

Tip:

- Using dd with the `bs=` option, e.g. `bs=1M`, is frequently used to increase disk throughput of the operation.
- To perform a check of the operation, zero the partition before creating the wipe container. After the wipe command `blockdev --getsize64 /dev/mapper/container` can be used to get the exact container size as root. Now od can be used to spotcheck whether the wipe overwrote the zeroed sectors, e.g. `od -j containersize - blocksize` to view the wipe completed to the end.

Finally, close the temporary container:

    # cryptsetup close container

When encrypting an entire system, the next step is #Partitioning. If just encrypting a partition, continue dm-crypt/Encrypting a non-root file system#Partition.

#### dm-crypt wipe free space after installation

Users who did not have time for the wipe procedure before installation, can achieve a similar effect once the encrypted system is booted and the filesystems are mounted. However, consider if the concerned filesystem may have set up reserved space, e.g. for the root user, or another disk quota mechanism, that that may limit the wipe even when performed by the root user: some parts of the underlying block device might not get written to at all.

To execute the wipe, temporarily fill the remaining free space of the partition by writing to a file inside the encrypted container:

    # dd if=/dev/zero of=/file/in/container status=progress

    dd: writing to ‘/file/in/container’: No space left on device

Sync the cache to disk and then delete the file to reclaim the free space.

    # sync
    # rm /file/in/container

The above process has to be repeated for every partition blockdevice created and filesystem in it. For example, setting-up LVM on LUKS, the process has to be performed for every logical volume.

#### Wipe LUKS header

The partitions formatted with dm-crypt/LUKS contain a header with the cipher and crypt-options used, which is referred to `dm-mod` when opening the blockdevice. After the header the actual random data partition starts. Hence, when re-installing on an already randomized drive, or de-commissioning one (e.g. sale of PC, switch of drives, etc.) it may be just enough to wipe the header of the partition, rather than overwriting the whole drive - which can be a lengthy process.

Wiping the LUKS header will delete the PBKDF2-encrypted (AES) master key, salts and so on.

Note: It is crucial to write to the LUKS encrypted partition (`/dev/sda1` in this example) and not directly to the disks device node. Setups with encryption as a device-mapper layer on top of others, e.g. LVM on LUKS on RAID should then write to RAID respectively.

A header with one single default 256 bit size keyslot is 1024KB in size. It is advised to also overwrite the first 4KB written by dm-crypt, so 1028KB have to be wiped. That is `1052672` Byte.

For zero offset use:

    # head -c 1052672 /dev/urandom > /dev/sda1; sync

For 512 bit key length (e.g. for aes-xts-plain with 512 bit key) the header is 2MB.

If in doubt, just be generous and overwrite the first 10MB or so.

    # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda1 bs=512 count=20480

Note: With a backup-copy of the header data can get rescued but the filesystem was likely damaged as the first encrypted sectors were overwritten. See further sections on how to make a backup of the crucial header blocks.

When wiping the header with random data everything left on the device is encrypted data. An exception to this may occur for an SSD, because of cache blocks SSDs employ. In theory it may happen that the header was cached in these some time before and that copy may consequently be still available after wiping the original header. For strong security concerns, a secure ATA erase of the SSD should be done (procedure please see the cryptsetup FAQ 5.19).

## Partitioning

This section only applies when encrypting an entire system. After the drive(s) has/have been securely overwritten, a proper partitioning scheme will have to be accurately chosen, taking into account the requirements of dm-crypt, and the effects that the various choices will have on the management of the resulting system.

It is important to note from now that in almost every case there has to be a separate partition for `/boot` that must remain unencrypted, because the bootloader needs to access the `/boot` directory where it will load the initramfs/encryption modules needed to load the rest of the system (see mkinitcpio for details). If this raises security concerns, see dm-crypt/Specialties#Securing the unencrypted boot partition.

Another important factor to take into account is how the swap area and system suspension will be handled, see dm-crypt/Swap encryption.

### Physical partitions

In the simplest case, the encrypted layers can be based directly on the physical partitions; see Partitioning for the methods to create them. Just like in an unencrypted system, a root partition is sufficient, besides another for `/boot` as noted above. This method allows deciding which partitions to encrypt and which to leave unencrypted, and works the same regardless of the number of disks involved. It will also be possible to add or remove partitions in the future, but resizing a partition will be limited by the size of the disk that is hosting it. Finally note that separate passphrases or keys are required to open each encrypted partition, even though this can be automated during boot using the `crypttab` file, see Dm-crypt/System configuration#crypttab.

### Stacked block devices

If more flexibility is needed, though, dm-crypt can coexist with other stacked block devices like LVM and RAID. The encrypted containers can either reside below or on top of other stacked block devices:

- If the LVM/RAID devices are created on top of the encrypted layer, it will be possible to add, remove and resize the file systems of the same encrypted partition liberally, and only one key or passphrase will be required for all of them. Since the encrypted layer resides on a physical partition, though, it will not be possible to exploit the ability of LVM and RAID to span multiple disks.
- If the encrypted layer is created on top of LVM/RAID devices, it will still be possible to reorganize the file systems in the future, but with added complexity, since the encryption layers will have to be adjusted accordingly. Moreover, separate passphrases or keys will be required to open each encrypted device. This, however, is the only choice for systems that need encrypted file systems to span multiple disks.

### Btrfs subvolumes

Btrfs's built-in subvolumes feature can be used with dm-crypt, fully replacing the need for LVM if no other file systems are required. However note that swap files are not supported by brtrfs, so an encrypted swap partition is necessary if swap is desired. See also Dm-crypt/Encrypting an entire system#Btrfs subvolumes with swap.

### Boot partition (GRUB)

This article or section needs expansion.

Reason: The GRUB bootloader's feature "early cryptodisks", allows for (a) an unlocking of a LUKS encrypted root partition to access the `/boot` mount point in it, or (b) an unlocking of a separate LUKS encrypted partition for `/boot`. Instructions to setup both should be added. Further, (c) the conversion of an existing unencrypted `/boot` partition to LUKS. (Discuss in User_talk:Grazzolini)
Categories:

- Encryption
- File systems

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