[Discuss] Server/laptop full-disk encryption

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Following a recent burglary, in which a laptop was stolen, I want to go
through my systems and protect them with full-disk encryption.

Most of the Linux HOWTOs on this subject seem arcane/cumbersome. I assume LUKS
is the best approach in the open-source world; to prepare for this, I bought
new motherboards and new AES-enabled Intel CPUs to ensure encryption
throughput is comparable to that of my I/O subsystems.  (We've also been doing
a lot of this at work, using high-cost products from Vormetric and Amazon Web
Services.)

The thorny problems with doing this are making sure that

(a) the keys are convenient, readily accessible at every reboot
(b) the keys can't readily fall into the wrong hands
(c) infrequently-accessed filesystems aren't accessible except when needed
(d) generated keys and pass-phrases have sufficient entropy
(e) the keys and pass-phrases can survive *me* (e.g. by somehow keeping an
up-to-date version in a bank safe-deposit box in case I get hit by the
proverbial bus)

Most of the HOWTOs online seem to be utter crap.  Can someone point me to
something that's readable yet sufficiently technical to serve as a decent
launching point? I'm kinda thinking I'd like to have a local keyserver (on my
LAN) protected by a passphrase, if it's possible to make the keys available
via a local URL rather than a silly USB dongle that I have to carry around.

-rich