On Mon, 2004-07-05 at 21:54, W. Michael Petullo wrote:
>> I am working on implementing encrypted root filesystem
support to
>> mkinitrd. See
>>
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=124789 for more
>> information and an patch.
> I looked at the patch any I see the problem that you need to call
> mkinitrd with certain arguments in order for this to work. This
> should just kind of determine the parameters (i.e. read them from a
> config file written while creating the encrypted root device) used on
> the current root fs and apply them automatically so that calls to
> mkinitrd from e.g. the kernel pkgs' %post scripts work.
Okay, that's a great point. Where should the configuration file be? /
etc/sysconfig/rootfs would get my vote.
ACK as far as I'm concerned.
If my system password is not unknown to others then my encryption
password is probably no good either. I think root has to be trusted in
most cases. I would be interested to hear any arguments that "only
mount[ing] the encrypted, potentially sensitive stuff when you need it"
would be more secure than unmounting encrypted volumes a login time
(assuming a strong system authentication token).
If I have a different password, there is no representation of it on disk
(like crypt() or MD5 hashes of a login password). There's a reason my
PGP pass phrase is different from my login password as well ;-). If one
is compromised, the other isn't.
Nils
--
Nils Philippsen / Red Hat / nphilipp(a)redhat.com
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- B. Franklin, 1759
PGP fingerprint: C4A8 9474 5C4C ADE3 2B8F 656D 47D8 9B65 6951 3011