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Description of problem: When I did a fresh installation of F16 I noticed that anaconda offers an option to encrypt not only the system but also specific partitions. Because only my home directory might contain material worth encrypting I decided to order anaconda to encrypt the partition with /home. After proceeding anaconda asked me the following question: 'Choose a passphrase for the encrypted device. You will be prompted for this passphrase during system boot.' I remember using Kubuntu with an encrypted /home partition. It didn't require me to give a passphrase each time I booted the system, if I'm correct it would decrypt the /home partition when I logged in with my user. Why can't Fedora do that too? It seems very tedious to give a passphrase every time you boot the system and then give your password to log in with your user account. After reading this critical article – http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2011/05/09/home-directory-and-full-disk-encryption-in-ubuntu-11-04/ – on how Ubuntu deals with encryption I understand why Fedora does this, but I still think that merely encrypting the home directory is a good compromise between security and ease of use.
/home is shared between multiple users. Some of whom you may not want to give the passphrase to. Mounting /home is a system task, not something that happens per-user login, so it makes sense to prompt for its passphrase while booting.
I believe that this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedHome is the behavior that is being requested. I, too, would like to see this as an option.
Yes Sean, that's exactly what I requested intially. But after reading the link I provided in my initial comment I would totally understand if the Fedora developers wouldn't want to implement it, because it's not secure enough.