Decrypting Disks without Passwords on Reboot

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:05:01 -0400

Like many tech hobbyists, I run a fair number of servers and VMs at home, and a lot of them hold data I would rather keep encrypted. Drives and SSDs eventually fail (you should have backups, but that is an entry for another day) and sometimes get stolen. If the data is encrypted, both are far less stressful events.

The catch is that encrypted data has to be decrypted before it is useful. The usual model, typical of Linux’s LUKS encryption, is that someone types a passphrase at boot after every power failure or maintenance window. LUKS can instead tie the key to the machine’s TPM, much as Windows BitLocker does, but that is less effective for VMs and does little if the TPM is stolen along with the drive. A passphrase at boot has real security advantages. Its serious disadvantage is that a person has to be present to type it, every time.

Tether iPhone to OPNsense

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 14:30:06 -0400

Last updated for OPNsense 26.7.3_11.

If you have an OPNsense firewall and a spare iPhone on a cell plan that allows tethering, you can use the phone as the firewall’s WAN connection to the cell network. This is handy in a long outage, for example a hurricane taking down your cable provider for more than a week. (Just an example.)

There are some hurdles, and it is best to configure all of this before you need it. During an outage it is hard to download the things you need.

Opnsense on The Solutions Are Known

Decrypting Disks without Passwords on Reboot

Tether iPhone to OPNsense