Cryptsetup and partitions

Question

I have the following Centos 7 system that I inherited. Here's the disk setup:

# lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk
├─sda1        8:1    0   200M  0 part  /boot/efi
├─sda2        8:2    0     1G  0 part  /boot
└─sda3        8:3    0 930.3G  0 part
  ├─cl-root 253:0    0    50G  0 lvm   /
  ├─cl-swap 253:1    0   3.9G  0 lvm   [SWAP]
  └─cl-home 253:2    0 876.4G  0 lvm   /home
sdb           8:16   0   3.7T  0 disk
└─sdb1        8:17   0   3.7T  0 part
  └─crypt1  253:4    0   3.7T  0 crypt /mount1
sdc           8:32   0  12.8T  0 disk
└─crypt2    253:3    0  12.8T  0 crypt /mount2
sdd           8:48   0   2.7T  0 disk
└─crypt3    253:5    0   2.7T  0 crypt /mount3

Note that everything is working fine, and all the crypt disks open fine and are fully accessible. My question is more about tidyness: Note that disk sdb has a partition defined whereas sdc and sdd do not. Is this a "problem" in any way shape or form (e.g. security)? Should sdc and sdd have partitions too? Or is this something that I can continue to ignore?

I would be more concerned about naming block devices "crypt1" (well duh, I can *see* its encrypted, who will I ask if I ever need the keys?) and the kitchen sink assortment of disks that makes me wonder if its mirrored by another kitchen sink assortment of backup scripts that grew over time but never properly backups everything. — anx, Dec 26 '20 at 04:06

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 25 '20 at 12:23

You may ignore it. sdc and sdd are block devices, so you can encrypt them or build file systems on them the same as sdb1.

Partitioning adds flexibility or course. But you can also get that by adding the disks to an LVM storage pool.

Note, I'm not able to immediately find any documentation about this. So take it with a grain of salt. But it's always been my understanding, and I've used unpartitioned disks without any trouble.

Cryptsetup and partitions

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