booster VS tang

People should stop using plain passwords to protect data and switch to something better.oster/ + Yubikey

Change from mkinitcpio to booster. It's faster and produce smaller images.

Neither, use booster.

Booster is an initramfs - a type of software that runs early during the boot process and helps to setup system, e.g. perform disk unlock, load extra drivers, setup ZFS filesystem, and so on.

I don't have high hopes that this will change in mkinitcpio, but perhaps you could bring it up with booster (which copied the mkinitcpio hooks and removal scripts)

This is my personal preference, but consider switching to booster.

initramfs: booster - TPM2 support, way faster than mkinitcpio, autodiscovering root partition

Note I'm using booster, so assuming you're using the default mkinitcpio you probably want /boot/initramfs-linux.img. Also, don't forget to modify if your ESP isn't mounted at /boot like mine.

Booster initramfs generator supports TPM, Yubikey and Network binding so you can easily protect your data using the strategy you want.

GPT table detection has higher priority at booster code. But for some reason it does not identify your partition table as GPT. Filed a github bug for it https://github.com/anatol/booster/issues/119

Have a look at clevis and tang. These allow you do have one server - which could be your remote you want to pull from - to be source of the LUKS decryption on the system using tang.

I found that running tang[1] at home and needing to decrypt that box (can be a Pi or whatever) requiring a complex passphrase is very sufficient. You can even just unplug it at night if it makes you sleep better.

https://github.com/latchset/tang

There are 3 ways to unlock a volume in a headless environment: - use a keyfile, located on an already available volume - use your device's TPM and utilize systemd-cryptenroll - use Clevis/Tang to unlock volumes remotely

This is why on headless servers you use tang (ideally, multiple tang servers)

Sharing my notes on running a Tang server on OPNSense, in case it is useful for somebody else.

We use clevis against multiple tang servers to provide Network Bound Disk Encryption (NBDE). It's possible to also use TPM2 but it's easier to use multiple tang servers (requiring more than one server to decrypt) in the datacenter.

For automating unlocking of encrypted drives, look into tang . Here is a red hat guide on setting it up. You will want to be running this on another device on your network, i run it on my router with openwrt since its a local device thats on 24/7. Basically it will unlock your disks as long as your server is on your network, so if your machine or drives are stolen or removed from your network they will just be encrypted as usual. Obviously use a strong encryption password.

There are other ways to bind data, e.g. "network binding" with Tang server.

I wonder if https://github.com/latchset/clevis and https://github.com/latchset/tang (complementary projects) will help here.

Yes you can, using either Mandos or Clevis and Tang. https://www.recompile.se/mandos https://github.com/latchset/clevis https://github.com/latchset/tang. Basically on boot the server gets the key from another(s) servers. You could use a hidden raspberry pi for example.