Explain the reasoning behind the crypt setup.

diff --git a/blog/data/2013-07-17-new-laptop.txt b/blog/data/2013-07-17-new-laptop.txt
index 7d67fef0fcad81fbbe307b1e145bf38b5db025cc..6509fe1b3a24ff79e54acea47a3218f6c65f36b7 100644 (file)
--- a/blog/data/2013-07-17-new-laptop.txt
+++ b/blog/data/2013-07-17-new-laptop.txt
@@ -63,6 +63,16 @@ top of this again.  At the moment these parameters are tuned:
 
 </ul>
 
+<p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
+the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
+little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
+those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
+computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
+from getting the data on the disk (see
+<ahref="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
+Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
+right thing to do.</p>
+
 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>