Booting GELI from CD...
Fred Davidson
fredbsdavidson at yahoo.com
Thu Jun 7 11:15:16 UTC 2007
I think I am close to getting GELI to boot from CD.
Here's what I've done.
#Followed instructions per these threads [1]. This
#included creating a file backed memory disk to allow
#GELI to mount the root filesystem with a keyfile on
the #CD.
#You'll see from my previous post, and that of others,
#that many were having trouble booting from USB sticks
#even from modern BIOSes[2]. No one has been able to
#identify the problem to date. In the meantime booting
#from CD is supposed to be a far more reliable.
#I followed the instructions for mkisofs from [1]b,
and #burned to cd-r like this:
burncd -f /dev/acd0 data grubboot.iso /iso
#This works great! until the dreaded loader takes
over.
#you'll recall loader hanging and not being able to
#read the kernel from the USB pendrive was a previous
#issue. Here is the current output from loader while
#booting the CD:
BTXloader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01
Consoles: internal video/keyboard
BIOS drive C: is disk0
BIOS 631kB/980480kB available memory
FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 1.1
(example at example.edu, Sun May 9 02:19:03 UTC 2006)
Can't work out which disk we are booting from.
Guessed BIOS device 0x9f not found by probes,
defaulting to disk0:
can't load 'kernel'
Type '?' for a list of commands, 'help' for more
detailed help.
OK
# if I 'lsdev' I get the following output.
cd devices:
disk devices:
disk0: BIOS drive C:
disk0s1a:FFS
disk0s1b:swap
disk0s1d:FFS
disk0s1e:FFS
disk0s1f:FFS
disk0s2: FFS bad disklabel
#disk 0 is an unencrypted FBSD6.1 install. Disk0s2 is
#the GELI install. I assume there is a problem
reading #the cd device because there is no output?
This was #the same problem when booting from usb;
whichever disk
#was the usb would have no output in the same way.
#I want to mention that if I boot from the FBSD
install #disk and and escape to the loader prompt and
lsdev, I #get:
cd devices: Device 0x1
#Also while booting the BTX screen says:
BIOS CD is cd0
#You might comment on why I'm using grub instead of
#cdboot? the main reason is I want to take advantage
of #menu.lst to choose between OSes when booting from
the #CD. I'll also try all of this with /boot/cdboot
to #see if I can just get it to work. In the mean
time, #ideas?
-Fred
[1]a.
events.ccc.de/congress/2005/fahrplan/attachments/586-paper_Complete_Hard_Disk_Encryption.pdf
b.
http://www.bsdforums.org/forums/showthread.php?t=43796
c.
http://www.proportion.ch/index.php?page=31
[2] a.
http://docs.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?208229.54978.qm
b.
http://docs.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?45F91CF0.6010506
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