On Tuesday 25 March 2008, Wael Nasreddine wrote:
> This One Time, at Band Camp, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc@gmail.com> said, 
On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 09:03:29AM +0100:
> > >  But you can boot from a LiveCD, mount your harddrive, chroot and then
> > >  give root another password.
> >
> > But then, conventional passwords are as useless. One needs no more
> > than physical access to the computer, a LiveCD and a couple minutes in
> > order to become the super user of your system. Basically, the password
> > seems useful only to know whether anyone has changed it behind your
> > back.
> >
> > I am starting to wonder why am I so attached to my root password being
> > strong.. :)
> > Liviu
>
> That's why I have my entire installation over a DM-CRYPT ( LUKS
> encrypted partition... ), including swaps and storage ( LVM over
> DM-CRYPT actually), this way even if someone had a physical access to
> my laptop, both GRUB and LiveCD approach would be useless...

I've thought about going for this . . . and then backpedaled once more.  Every 
time I had a fs problem I have managed to recover to this date without much 
trouble.  Vanilla primary and extended partitions seem to be straight forward 
to access with any LiveCD.  To be honest even when I had to frig about with 
LVM I managed to recover without loss of data (more out of luck than skill I 
suspect).  The thought however, that I may lose my private key (never say 
never), or lose a drive and need to access my data pronto from a back up 
makes me somewhat nervous.  Should I be more brave that this?
-- 
Regards,
Mick