GELI problem... Oh, I mean disaster

[Pawel Jakub Dawidek]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 06:55:19PM +0200, Alex Karpovic wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I am a long-time user of geli encryption, but just today I faced a problem,
> connected probably to some hardware malfunction, and I am in need of good
> advice now.
> 
> I have a SATA drive, encrypted as whole with GELI. Booting is performed via
> usbflash drive.
> 
> Today I tried to add an old IDE hdd, but when I turned my box on, loud
> clicking sound informed me that the hdd is physically broken. OK, turned
> computer off right after memory test, removed IDE hdd, and tried to boot as
> usual. However, GELI is unable to recognize my encrypted SATA now!

Strange. Please send content of /var/run/dmesg.boot, output of
geli dump <your_sata_disk>, etc.
Your previous /var/run/dmesg.boot would be also helpful if you can dig
it up from your backups.

> I do bi-weekly backups, but in current situation it won't save me. I did a
> lot of work recently, and deadline is so near, that I cannot recreate all
> that is lost.
> Therefore, my first question is evident: taking into account the situation,
> is it possible that the damage is reversible? I know there's little hope,
> but maybe it is just a signature, which could be re-written?
> Second question is to feed my brain: what is the technical nature of my
> problem? Before that, I never expirienced a damaging of good SATA caused by
> attaching of bad IDE.

-- 
Pawel Jakub Dawidek                       http://www.wheel.pl
pjd at FreeBSD.org                           http://www.FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD committer                         Am I Evil? Yes, I Am!
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