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feat(disk): add custom cipher selection for LUKS2 encryption#4581

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Alperen42v wants to merge 2 commits into
archlinux:masterfrom
Alperen42v:feature/luks-cipher-selection
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feat(disk): add custom cipher selection for LUKS2 encryption#4581
Alperen42v wants to merge 2 commits into
archlinux:masterfrom
Alperen42v:feature/luks-cipher-selection

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@Alperen42v

@Alperen42v Alperen42v commented Jun 8, 2026

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  • This fix issue: ## PR Description:
    This PR introduces the ability for users to select a custom encryption cipher (such as chacha20-poly1305) directly from the disk encryption menu during the installation process.

Changes:

  • luks.py: Added a cipher attribute to the Luks2 dataclass and dynamically injected the --cipher flag into the cryptsetup luksFormat command if specified.
  • device_handler.py: Updated encrypt() and format_encrypted() functions to accept and forward the selected cipher configuration from DiskEncryption.

This enhances the flexibility of the installer, enabling advanced users to deploy forensics-resistant setups easily.

Tests and Checks

  • I have tested the code!

    (Note: Code has been statically verified and peer-reviewed, but not yet tested on a live installation environment.)

@Alperen42v Alperen42v requested a review from Torxed as a code owner June 8, 2026 19:08
@svartkanin

svartkanin commented Jun 9, 2026

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You have clearly not tested any of this code as archinstall doesn't even start up

@Alperen42v

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hii thank you for the feedback You are completely right. The reason I opened this PR early is that this is still a work-in-progress (WIP). As a beginner who is contributing to FOSS for the very first time, I wanted to share the core idea and the basic implementation early, hoping to get feedback and collaboration from more experienced developers to help me finish and fix it.

I didn't mean to push a broken build as a final version. I will run it locally with python -m archinstall, find the traceback, and fix the startup crash. Any guidance on what caused the crash would be highly appreciated

@Torxed Torxed marked this pull request as draft June 9, 2026 13:53
@svartkanin

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That's fine, given that the PR was raised in non-draft state I was under the impression this is the final state. Ideally if you want to ask for feedback it'd be better to raise an issue first and then discuss it there to avoid unnecessary throw away work.

I think the feature is fine to be added as long as we keep the current algorithm as the default setting. Some pointers

  • Use enums for algorithm definitions
  • Make sure you test saving and restoring of settings
  • Make sure you test encryption with all filesystem options and combinations of LVM as well

@Alperen42v

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Update!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have just pushed additional commits to fully support custom LUKS encryption cipher selection, successfully bridging the interactive TUI menu, the device modeland the backend execution.

Changes implemented:

  • TUI (encryption_menu.py): Added the asynchronous cipher selection submenu Fixed an issue where selecting alternative ciphers (like ChaCha20) would drop the value to None by properly tracking the EncryptionCipher Enum. Added a live preview action for the right-hand panel.
  • Model (device.py): Integrated the cipher attribute into the EncryptionConfig backend data structure.
  • Backend (luks.py): Hooked up the selected cipher so it can be passed properly to the underlying cryptsetup execution logic.

Testing Status

  • TUI & Data Flow: Thoroughly tested locally. The menu operates without runtime errors, and the live preview panel updates immediately with the chosen cipher (e.g., aes-xts-plain64, chacha20-random).
  • End-to-End Installation: I haven't done a full, bare-metal end-to-end installation test to verify the actual disk formatting with the custom cipher yet. However, the data mappings and structural logic are complete and correctly aligned with the existing codebase
    *** yes***

@Torxed

Torxed commented Jun 11, 2026

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These things are generally fine if it's tested in a VM, hardware installation is more important with driver/firmware related things like GPU drivers and DE environments.

But I'm in the process of testing stuff for a release, and could test this while I'm at it. Not sure it will be tested enough to make it into the release, but if everything looks fine I might sneak it in ^^

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3 participants