This is based on Debian Linux but should apply equally to any *nix distro.

Install LUKS/crypt-setup

apt-get install cryptsetup

Setup your LUKS Partition

Of course change /dev/md2 with whatever partition you intend to use LUKS on.

cryptsetup --verbose --verify-passphrase luksFormat /dev/md2

You'll be asked to verify your decryption password twice

*DO NOT FORGET THIS PASSWORD AS IT IS NOT RECOVERABLE!

Open/Unlock your LUKS Partition

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/md2 mylukspartition

You'll be asked for your passphrase at this point (the one you entered above, hopefully you haven't forgotten it already!)

You can change "mylukspartition" to whatever you would like to call it, it just controls the name created in /dev/mapper which is the device you will use to mount the encrypted LUKS partition.

You'll find that the above command creates /dev/mapper/mylukspartition

This will create the device for your LUKS partition (remember you will never be able to open it directly and you'll always need the LUKS tools to unlock the partition, so keep this in mind when using a Live/Recovery CD etc...)

CREATE the filesystem on the LUKS device

mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/mylukspartition

*Of course you can use any filesystem over top of LUKS but most will probably use ext3

Mount the LUKS Partition

mkdir /mnt/luks


mount /dev/mapper/mylukspartition /mnt/luks


To Umount and Secure Your Data

cryptsetup luksClose /dev/mapper/mylukspartition

Now your data is safe and in order to mount (luksOpen) you will need the passphrase which only you should know.