I recently switched to Linux (Zorin OS) and I selected “use ZFS and encrypt” during installation. Now before I can log in it asks me “please unlock disk keystore-rpool” and I have to type in the encryption password it before I’m able to get to the login screen.
Is there a way to do this automatically like with Windows or MacOS? Zorin has biometric login which is nice but this defeats the purpose especially because the encryption password is long and tedious to type in.
Also might TPM have anything to do with this?
EDIT: Based on the responses I have to assume some of you guys live in windowless underground bunkers sealed off with concrete because door locks “aren’t secure against battering rams”. Normal people don’t need perfect encryption they just want to add an extra hurdle or two for the crackhead who steals the PC. I assumed Linux had a system similar to what Windows or MacOS has been doing for a decade but I am apparently wrong.
There used to be exactly what you are looking for. Encfs, and later ecryptfs could encrypt just the data in your home folder.
It was a checkbox in ubuntu installer, just like the full disk encryption today. The key was protected by the standard user password.
Unfortunately, it was deprecated due to discovered security weaknesses, and I’m not aware of any viable replacement.
Systemd-homed does the same. But it is quite a huge change in the system, see this thread on the Fedora Discuss
Looks like it’s creating a new volume in a file, but I don’t see any type of quota being set upfront. If it scales up dynamically, it looks like a hot candidate. At this point I just hope distro maintainers settle down on something, anything, and give it a long term support.