[SATLUG] Drive Encryption

[Sean Carolan]

> I use Mac OS X.  I don't use this feature, because it has screwed up
> way too many people in the past.  It's a nice idea, but I am nowhere
> near convinced that Apple has properly implemented it yet.

Here's my $0.02 on OS X FileVault(1):

It works great until you attempt to log out or shut down.  Imagine
you've selected "shutdown" and walked away from the computer expecting
it to "/sbin/shutdown -h now", but no, a friendly pop-up window
appears a few seconds later asking whether you want to optimize your
FileVault volume.

Apple is generally pretty good about UI and design, this is a huge
mistake.  I wouldn't put it up there with the one-button hockey-puck
mouse(2), but still.  You shouldn't ask the end-user this kind of
question during a shutdown.  Or at least have a reasonable timeout
period after which it simply unmounts the volume and shuts down.
Instead the computer sits there prompting you, until you answer the
question or the battery dies.

I can't speak from personal experience about file corruption, but I'm
sure it could happen.  Filesystems on encrypted volumes can sometimes
be fragile and hard to recover.

1.  http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/filevault/
2.  http://images.google.com/images?q=hockey+puck+mouse