systemd-cryptsetup is used to set up (with attach) and tear down (with detach) access to an encrypted
block device. It is primarily used via systemd-cryptsetup@.service during early boot, but may also be
called manually. The positional arguments VOLUME, SOURCE-DEVICE, KEY-FILE, and CRYPTTAB-OPTIONS have the
same meaning as the fields in crypttab(5).
systemd-cryptsetup@.service is a service responsible for providing access to encrypted block devices. It
is instantiated for each device that requires decryption.
systemd-cryptsetup@.service instances are part of the system-systemd\x2dcryptsetup.slice slice, which is
destroyed only very late in the shutdown procedure. This allows the encrypted devices to remain up until
filesystems have been unmounted.
systemd-cryptsetup@.service will ask for hard disk passwords via the passwordagentlogic[1], in order to
query the user for the password using the right mechanism at boot and during runtime.
At early boot and when the system manager configuration is reloaded, /etc/crypttab is translated into
systemd-cryptsetup@.service units by systemd-cryptsetup-generator(8).
In order to unlock a volume a password or binary key is required. systemd-cryptsetup@.service tries to
acquire a suitable password or binary key via the following mechanisms, tried in order:
1. If a key file is explicitly configured (via the third column in /etc/crypttab), a key read from it is
used. If a PKCS#11 token, FIDO2 token or TPM2 device is configured (using the pkcs11-uri=,
fido2-device=, tpm2-device= options) the key is decrypted before use.
2. If no key file is configured explicitly this way, a key file is automatically loaded from
/etc/cryptsetup-keys.d/volume.key and /run/cryptsetup-keys.d/volume.key, if present. Here too, if a
PKCS#11/FIDO2/TPM2 token/device is configured, any key found this way is decrypted before use.
3. If the try-empty-password option is specified then unlocking the volume with an empty password is
attempted.
4. If the password-cache= option is set to "yes" or "read-only", the kernel keyring is then checked for
a suitable cached password from previous attempts.
5. Finally, the user is queried for a password, possibly multiple times, unless the headless option is
set.
If no suitable key may be acquired via any of the mechanisms describes above, volume activation fails.