Hard drive encryption question for dual-boot XP and Fedora

[Les Mikesell]

John Summerfield wrote:
> Tim wrote:
>> On Fri, 2007-12-28 at 08:05 +0900, John Summerfield wrote:
>>> I would not defy The Boss, but if he agrees Linux is good for its 
>>> diagnostic tools, then the question becomes "How do we do this?" and a
>>> USB disk that's encrypted and doesn't carry sensitive data, or even a 
>>> CD/DVD might be part of the answer. 
>>
>> Surely you'd only need to encrypt that which needs protecting.  Network
>> diagnosis tools don't sound like something that needs it.  And if you're
>> sensible enough to use different passwords, then someone finding out
>> your logon credentials from an unprotected diagnosis partition can't use
>> them to logon to the other protected one.
>>
> 
> I would not be surprised if the corporate policy is to encrypt 
> everything. That way, there can be no nasty surprises if, accidentally 
> or by carelessness, sensitive data gets stored on the "network 
> diagnostics toolset."
> 
> For example, the results of running tcpdump or wireshark. Simply erasing 
> the files isn't enough, the space they occupied needs to be overwritten 
> too.
> 
> A likely sanction for defying such a policy is an invitation to seek 
> employment elsewhere.

Can't you just boot from a CD when you need to do network diagnostics? 
Knoppix has about everything you would be likely to need.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com