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I want to create a new encrypted LUKS-partition in GParted.

I've searched the UI and the help, but the only thing I can find is how to open and close an existing LUKS partition and how to to copy and paste an existing one.

However, I can find no way to create a new one. I can create a new partition e.g. for btrfs, but it is never encrypted.

So it seems for that only task of creating a new partition I have to resort to other tools like GNOME Disks (GNOME Disk Utility), which easily allows this when creating a new partition, or fallback to the commandline, which I'd like to avoid. Or is there any way to create a new encrypted partition?

Broader use case

Actually, i want to do what is described in the GParted help: Copy an encrypted partition and „maintaining an encrypted” partition on a new disk. However, to do so (i.e. to not decrypt the data while copying), I have to paste it „into an existing open LUKS encrypted partition”, i.e. I need to have an encrypted partition first.

So, finally, is there any way to create a new encrypted partition in GParted?

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2 Answers 2

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GParted doesn't support creating of encrypted partitions, you'll need to use either GNOME Disks or blivet-gui (shameless plug for my project) or you can just use cryptsetup directly if you are ok with using command line tools.

See GParted Features page for details about supported features, LUKS is listed as not supported in the Create column.

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    One other option, that I use, is KDE Partition Manager (partitionmanager package) . It does have LUKS encryption and plays nicely with mounting via cryptsetup luksOpen/cryptsetup luksClose commands. Once mounted with that you can see the drive on Gnome Nautilus or whatever your file manager is. Commented May 9, 2021 at 19:00
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I found a way to create a new encrypted LUKS-partition in GParted. I just needed to insert a cryptsetup command as a middle step, because GParted knows how to handle LUKS devices, just not initialising them.

The gParted creation of a LUKS crypted partition is just to be splitted in three parts:

  1. Create an unformatted device with gParted
  2. Encrypt the device with cryptsetup luksFormat
  3. Create the partition with gParted

Tips

  • Step A => choose "Unformatted" as File system
  • Step B => If luksFormat hangs or crashes, use this option: --pbkdf-memory 100000
  • Step C => use "Open Encryption" before partitioning
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