I've been using Pop!_OS for a while and really liked it, but now I'm considering switching to CachyOS due to some issues I've faced. My concern is regarding my encrypted drives. I've got four drives that are encrypted with LUKS and automatically decrypt at boot. I only plan to modify my OS drive during the installation. How do I integrate my encrypted drives once I switch to CachyOS? Does CachyOS support LUKS, and can I unlock the drives with the same password I've been using?
2 Answers
You should be fine transferring to CachyOS with your encrypted drives. Just make sure you have everything backed up on an external drive, just in case something goes wrong during the switch. It’s always safer to have your important data in more than one place!
Yes, CachyOS, just like Arch, has solid support for LUKS. If all your encrypted drives share the same password, they can all be unlocked with one prompt during boot. Just ensure you're using 'sd-encrypt' instead of the 'encrypt' option in your mkinitcpio configuration. I’ve managed to set up encrypted root and swap on my Arch laptop without any issues.
I can confirm that they use the same key. Can you explain more about the mkinitcpio config? I'm planning on using GNOME as my desktop environment and thought I'd set up decryption with the GNOME Disks utility. Will that not work?
Just a heads up, OP mentioned using TPM unlock for added security, which can be a factor to consider.
I’ve got backups of everything crucial, but there are some files I wouldn't mind losing. Still, the thought of transferring a lot of data doesn’t sound great to me.