geli_devices entry in rc.conf

Roland Smith rsmith at xs4all.nl
Tue Apr 27 18:41:02 UTC 2010


On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 12:26:16PM +0200, Demelier David wrote:
> Hi freebsd-questions@,
> 
>    I made some encryption on my USB mass storage, so I wanted to know if we can
>    geli {attach,detach} as user ? Since we can mount devices as user it would be
>    great for geli too.

It seems that GEOM works by calling ioctl on /dev/geom.ctl. Maybe it it
possible to get non-root access by changing the permissions
on the /dev/geom.ctl device? But that would possibly enable those users to carry out
all geom actions, which is probably not a good thing from a security standpoint.
 
>    And what about the geli_devices in rc.conf the manpage says it attaches at
>    the boot process, so if the storage disk is not here will the geli attach if
>    I plug it after the boot ?

No. It just lists and handles the devices available at that time.

You might be able to do something with devd? It should be possible to write a
script that is to be called via devd once a disk device is available. That
script then should prompt the user (e.g. via xdialog) if a geli-encrypted
device is found. I'm not sure how to distinguish geli devices from non-geli
devices, though. 

Additionally, even though the disk system in 8.x doesn't panic anymore when
one removes a mounted USB drive, I'm not sure how well geli would handle that.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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