Installing with encrypted home

[drizzt]

Hi, i was wondering if i could get some help with the installation of EndeavourOS please.

I want to install EndeavourOS with the home partition encrypted. i have searched the ‘net’ including the forum here but am not able to find anything that seems to help with my situation. A lot out there talk about full disk enc or enc after installing, etc. i’m looking at encrypting just the home partition during installation.

i downloaded the ISO several months ago and am not sure what the ISO version is. i was able to install P KDE with online option, in one partition for root and home. it looked like everything was running fine. Then i wanted to install it again, but this time with home encrypted. so i booted up the usb and ran gparted to create a 50G root and 60G home partitions along with the existing 500M efi one. Selected manual partitioning, set up efi (systemd-boot) and / before moving to set up /home. i could not find where to make it an encrypted partition for the life of me (no option shown for the root partition either). i had tried searching the web, tried different options in the installer (even though some i believe would not make a difference), but nothing seemed to work. I even selected the LUKS and LUKS2 type but didn’t work (i beleive they are just the type and not actual the encryption itself). after about ten tries, i decided to give up. But after some days, i thought to try one more time. And… this time during the setting up of the /home partition there was this box that i could tick for encryption - i mean, it was right there under where the dropdown for selecting the type of partition. I was able to select ext4 type, and ticked the box to have it encrypted. Everything went through as smooth as a baby’s bottom. i had a beautiful working system. However, i had selected i3wm as i love it - had used it on a very very old system, a debian-based distro. Now, i can’t connect to the wifi no matter how i tried. The wifi configure software was clunky in the debain-based distro i used, but i was able to make it connect without too much difficulties. But with this one, it said it was connected to the AP but the welcome box would come up and a notification warned that there is no internet connection, which was true as firefox also confirmed. the advance network config utility just didnt seem to work or i didnt know what i was doing - it was suppose to be such a simple task though… So i decided to go back to KDE which had a better (easier?) wifi connection package. Booted up the usb once more, ran gparted and deleted the home partition and created a new ext4 one in its place. Ran the installer and manual partitioning. Same process, but when i got to the /home (and also for root) partition, i do not see the box for selecting encryption again… Surely i’m not seeing things or dreaming… i just can’t figure out what is happening with that little box to select for encryption. I dont see anyone else mentioning about it, so am not so quick to say something is wrong with it, as it is more likely gonna be a ‘me problem’.
My machine is a thinkpad x1 carbon 5th gen.
Hoping someone knows about it and can point me in the right direction.
Thanks in advance.
Cheers
P.S. i’ll try to include a screenshot if i figure out how to attach one here (but not sure if i can as it is my first time posting and probably not allowed to…)
P.S.S. Sorry for the long read, if you get this far.

[exp]

I do not really understand what you’re starting point is.
Do you want to encrypt the /home partition with an already installed system?
→ then you need to do it while it’s not mounted
Are you trying to encrypt it during a new installation?
→ this should be easily able do to from a live install medium by checking the encryption box in the installer

besides:
Why do you want to only encrypt the /home and not everyhting?
What do you mean the AP welcome box did not come up? Like these free-wifi welcome pages where you need to tick a box to get access?

[drizzt]

Hi exp,
Install as new installation. That one time, i could see the option to check the box for ecryption, which worked well. But all the other times i tried it, that box does not appear, even though i don’t seem to be doing anything differently.
My actions were:

1. installed without encryption - all good, with KDE.
2. Try new install again. Repartitioned, and tried installing with home enc many time. No check box for encryption.
3. finally one last try, the check box was there. installed and all good, but with i3wm.
4. Again, trying new install. Reinstalled with enc (after deleting that enc partition using gparted and creating new ext4), this time with KDE, but no good as no check box to select for enc. it is like the check box only shows up when it like or something.

Wanted to encrypt just the home as i wanted to ‘learn’. Do you mean everything as in whole disk enc? i thought maybe i might want to dual boot in future so am thinking whole disk won’t allow for that.
The EndeavourOS Welcome window (sorry, not box) comes up when i log in (with i3wm) and there is a notification saying a warning that there is no internet connection. Even though i configured the a wifi connection via the advance network configurator, it doesn’t seem to be successful. It shows a notification to say i am connected to the AP (access point) though, but doesn’t seem to be connected really.

[joekamprad]

first, welcome to the forum

If you want to only encrypt a home partition you will need to use manual partition option inside installer.
No need to use partition manager before.

The encryption option will be there every time, but in case you do create partitions before starting the installer you will not get the encryption option till you remove the pre created partitions.
You have to create them inside installer… or at least recreate them by deleting and recreate them one by one:

[drizzt]

Thanks Joe!
It would never have occurred to me that the encryption option won’t be available unless i create the partition then and there, and not beforehand. I managed to try again but this time i deleted the partition and created a new one during the installation - the encryption option was there.