I’ve been trying to set up hibernation on my laptop while also maintaining an encrypted root partition and swap using secure boot and my laptop’s TPM. I’ve documented the steps I’ve followed below, but I still am unable to enable hibernation.
I was under the impression that the only reason you can’t normally have both an encrypted harddrive and hibernation was because swap had to be encrypted as well, but if both the root partition and the swap are encrypted, I’m using UEFI secure boot, and they are automatically decrypted at boot using the TPM, shouldn’t that relieve those security concerns?
After completing the below, entering systemctl hibernate errors saying hibernation is not set up for the system. Am I missing something or is it just not possible? I can confirm not needing to enter passwords for my swap or root FS due to the TPM unlock.
My personal documentation below:
Drop into root shell
sudo su -
Setup LUKS encryption with automatic unlock with TPM
Install necessary components, regenerate initramfs and reboot
dnf install -y clevis clevis-luks clevis-dracut clevis-udisks2 clevis-systemd
dracut -fv --regenerate-all && systemctl reboot
Identify swap and root partition devices, names, and luks UUIDs…
lsblk -f
cryptsetup luksUUID <UUID>
In my case, my home partition is on /dev/nvme0n1p4 and my swap is /dev/nvme0n1p3
# the encrypted home partition
clevis luks bind -d /dev/nvme0n1p4 tpm2 '{"pcr_ids":"1,4,5,7"}'
# the encrypted swap
clevis luks bind -d /dev/nvme0n1p3 tpm2 '{"pcr_ids":"1,4,5,7"}'
Set a timeout before the system asks for a password, to allow time for the TPM to load and enter the password for you
systemctl edit systemd-ask-password-plymouth.service
Add the below then ctrl+o ctrl+x to save and exit
[Service]
ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 10
Create a dracut configuration file to install the systemd-ask-password-plymouth service: vi /etc/dracut.conf.d/systemd-ask-password-plymouth.conf
Add the below, ensure there are spaces inside the quotation marks on either side of the filename
install_items+=" /etc/systemd/system/systemd-ask-password-plymouth.service.d/override.conf "
Regenerate initramfs and reboot
dracut -fv ‐‐regenerate-all && systemctl reboot
Edit crypttab file (/etc/crypttab)to specify decryption of swap file at boot, duplicate the already present line for your root FS crypttab entry and change the UUIDs to reflect the swap file, use cryptsetup luksUUID /dev/nvme0n1p3 and cryptsetup luksUUID /dev/nvme0n1p4 to get the luks UUIDs for your root and swap partitions.
<swap LUKS UUID> UUID=<swap UUID> none x-initrd.attach
<root FS LUKS UUID> UUID=<root FS UUID> none x-initrd.attach
Regenerate initramfs and reboot: dracut -fv --regenerate-all && systemct reboot
Edit fstab to include swap, append the following to /etc/fstab:
UUID=<swap UUID> none swap defaults,x-systemd.device-timeout=0 1 1
Rebind your home and swap partitions. You will have to do this every time you update the kernel.
# encrypted home partition
clevis luks regen -d /dev/nvme0n1... -s 1
# encrypted swap
clevis luks regen -d /dev/nvme0n1... -s 1


I’ve got multiple machines that do this, but all on nixos.
This is weird, so I’d start here. Can you get the exact error and/or whatever it logs to journald?
I’d ignore all the TPM stuff until you can hibernate it and resume with a password. Maybe the swap is just too small? Maybe something in /etc/systemd/sleep.conf?
In case it helps, my device setup looks like this:
so luks -> lvm -> { swap, btrfs }
Edit:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management/Suspend_and_hibernate#Hibernation
So far I haven’t figured out from the systemd docs what “automatically pick a suitable swap space” actually means, or if that’s accurate.