Password Input
Observe the warnings about password security when setting the password for encrypted partitions and memorize it well. Without the password, the encrypted data cannot be accessed.

The YaST expert dialog for partitioning, described in Section 2.7.5, “Partitioning”, offers the options needed for creating an encrypted partition. Click ‘Create’ like when creating a regular partition. In the dialog that opens, enter the partitioning parameters for the new partition, such as the desired formatting and the mount point. Complete the process by clicking ‘Encrypt File System’. In the following dialog, enter the password twice. The new encrypted partition is created after the partitioning dialog is closed by clicking ‘OK’. While booting, the operating system requests the password before mounting the partition.

If you do not want to mount the encrypted partition during start-up, click Enter when prompted for the password. Then decline the offer to enter the password again. In this case, the encrypted file system is not mounted and the operating system continues booting, blocking access to your data. The partition is available to all users once it has been mounted.

If the encrypted file system should only be mounted when necessary, enable ‘Do Not Mount During Booting’ in the ‘fstab Options’ dialog. The respective partition will not be mounted when the system is booted. To make it available afterwards, mount it manually with mount name_of_partition mount_point. Enter the password when prompted to do so. After finishing your work with the partition, unmount it with umount name_of_partition to protect it from access by other users.

	Activating Encryption in a Running System
It is also possible to create encrypted partitions on a running system like during installation. However, encrypting an existing partition destroys all data on it.

On a running system, select ‘System’+‘Partitioning’ in the YaST control center. Click ‘Yes’ to proceed. Instead of selecting ‘Create’ as mentioned above, click ‘Edit’. The rest of the procedure is the same.

Instead of using a partition, it is possible to create encrypted file systems within single files for holding confidential data. These are created from the same YaST dialog. Select ‘Crypt File’ and enter the path to the file to create along with its intended size. Accept the proposed formatting settings and the file system type. Then specify the mount point and decide whether the encrypted file system should be mounted when the system is booted.

The advantage of encrypted files is that they can be added without repartitioning the hard disk. They are mounted with the help of a loop device and behave just like normal partitions.

The disadvantage of using encrypted partitions is that while the partition is mounted, at least root can access the data. To prevent this, vi can be used in encrypted mode.

Use vi -x filename to edit a new file. vi prompts you to set a password, after which it encrypts the content of the file. Whenever you access this file, vi requests the correct password.

For even more security, you can place the encrypted text file in an encrypted partition. This is recommended because the encryption used in vi is not very strong.