GELI file systems unusable after "glabel label" operations

[Tim Judd]

On 1/14/10, Scott Bennett <bennett at cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>      I used "glabel label" to label each of the file systems I have on
> external
> disk drives.  Unfortunately, afterward I am now unable to "geli attach" any
> of
> the GELI-encrypted file systems.  The system is FreeBSD 7.2-STABLE.  Is
> there
> a way to get this to work?  Or have I just lost everything in the encrypted
> file systems?
>
> hellas# geli attach -k work.key /dev/label/work
> geli: Cannot read metadata from /dev/label/work: Invalid argument.
> hellas# ls -lgF /dev/label/
> total 0
> crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 192 Jan 14 00:47 archives
> crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 191 Jan 14 00:47 backupsi
> crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 182 Jan 14 00:47 backupsl
> crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 166 Jan 14 00:47 backupss
> crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 179 Jan 14 00:47 sec
> crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 161 Jan 14 00:47 usrobj
> crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 184 Jan 14 00:47 usrports
> crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 186 Jan 14 00:47 vboxdisk
> crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 181 Jan 14 00:47 work
> hellas#
>
>      Any help in recovering the lost data would be deeply appreciated.  If
> that cannot be done, then at least knowing that would keep me from wasting
> further time on it.  Thanks much.



Are you aware that tunefs -L will label a device?  It is stored as
part of the filesystem, instead as a GEOM metadata.  So you should be
able to get both labeling (/dev/ufs/labelname) and GELI as you are
asking for.



As for recovering your data, I see other helpful posts in this thread,
as I have no additional helpful information to recommend.