Sunday 16 Feb 2025

LUKS Quick Unlock Guide

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I want to write a quick reference for the use of LUKS. LUKS is an encryption tool for linux to protect drive paritions.

The command-line approach to open the container is as follows:

• Get partition name through fdisk -l command; imporant, instead of sdd, you need to use sdd1
• Use the cryptsetup tool to manage this
• To create a map of the device, use:
  • cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdd1 encrypted_drive
• This will create a link between sdd1 and mapper; you can use any name you wish, but for this example I used encrypted_drive. You will need to enter your passphrase after the command is executed.
• Now, you need to mount the device:
  • mount /dev/mapper/encrypted_drive /mnt/drive

I use this tool to encrypt my external drives, replacing ecryptfs.

When finished, unmount the drive.

• System unmount first:
  • umount /mnt/drive
• And the encrypted mapper:
  • cryptsetup luksClose encrypted_drive

Here's a full guide to setup and LUKS container.