Getting GELI Keys from Floppy

Nikos Vassiliadis nvass at teledomenet.gr
Thu Sep 7 00:21:32 PDT 2006


On Thursday 07 September 2006 00:00, Frank Steinborn wrote:
> Hello,
>
> i want to encrypt my HDD's with GELI (not the root-fs, though). I want
> to do the encryption without password, just with a key. The key should
> be stored in a floppy disk, and the read should be read automatically
> on boot, from the floppy.

Are you sure you want to trust a floppy disk for your keys??
It's not the most safe medium these days...

>
> There is a problem here, because GELI initializes _before_ mounting
> the disks from /etc/fstab (for obvious reasons, of course). So GELI is
> not able to get the keys from the floppy and fails.
>
> So, any hints how I could get the floppy mounted _before_ GELI tries
> to initialize?

Why don't you use the plain device(/dev/fd0) instead of using a file on a 
filesystem on the floppy? I think there are examples in the manual page.

Anyway, I find this a very very bad idea. If the floppy break in some way
you're gonna be in big trouble...


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