Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 natively supports partition encryption through the
Linux Unified Key Setup-on-disk-format (LUKS) technology. The easiest way to
encrypt a partition is during installation time.
For manual installations, select the Encrypt checkbox during
partition creation to encrypt the partition. When this
option is selected the system will prompt for a passphrase to use in
decrypting the partition. The passphrase will subsequently need to be entered manually
every time the system boots.
For automated/unattended installations, it is possible to use Kickstart by adding
the --encrypted and --passphrase= options to the definition of each partition to be
encrypted. For example, the following line would encrypt the root partition:
part / --fstype=ext4 --size=100 --onpart=hda1 --encrypted --passphrase=PASSPHRASE
Any PASSPHRASE is stored in the Kickstart in plaintext, and the Kickstart
must then be protected accordingly.
Omitting the --passphrase= option from the partition definition will cause the
installer to pause and interactively ask for the passphrase during installation.
By default, the Anaconda installer uses aes-xts-plain64 cipher
with a minimum 512 bit key size which should be compatible with FIPS enabled.
Detailed information on encrypting partitions using LUKS or LUKS ciphers can be found on
the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Documentation web site:
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/security_guide/sec-encryption
.