I've partitioned (by hand, and using a specialized tool/distro) a hard drive, using a "GUID Partition Table" (GPT) - with an exact (to the byte, non-2MB(?) interval) partition alignment - where I've created a separate /home partition, in which the several "home" folders are stored encrypted and are then decrypted when a user logs in.
(I'm using Xubuntu 12.04, on that machine.)
However (lately, at least) the login process (with the decrypting process also presumably included) takes a very long time to finalize, and I have to wait about a minute, or so, before effectively entering an account on that computer.
And I suspect this is because of something in the decryption process that is taking a very long time to do. Which I find strange, since this is a recent and fast computer, which (at first, I think, wouldn't be as, and) shouldn't be this slow in this process.
The partitioning scheme I'm using is:
(1) a small 2 MB (required) partition, to adapt the hard drive to the non-EFI (BIOS) boot;
(2) an ext4 partition, for the OS itself ("root");
(3) an ext4 partition, for /home;
(4) and an encrypted swap partition.
When I let Ubuntu make the partitioning itself, in an installation process, and I choose for it to encrypt the "home" folders, I can see that it creates some MBR (non-GPT) extended and logical partitions(?), of variable size, instead of the fixed size that I'm using.
So, I suspect this might be the reason for the computer taking so much time decrypting the home folders.
(And I doubt it has anything to do with finding space to decrypt to, on that hard drive, since it is a very big one, with a huge amount of, and more than enough, free space...)
Can anyone here tell me if my suspicion is right?
(Or does the decryption process usually takes a long time, because of the amount of files involved?) (Like I said, I don't remember it taking this much time in the first logins...)
And, if my suspicion is right, what is, then, an optimal partitioning scheme to use with encrypted "home" folders?
Note: This does not happen *every* time, when I login... However, it does happen *most* of the times, now (from what I can notice and remember)...
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