Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Wael Nasreddine <mla@××××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Recovering root password
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:04:50
Message-Id: 20080325200226.GA25014@phoenix.nasreddine.info
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] Recovering root password by Mick
1 This One Time, at Band Camp, Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> said, On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 05:23:00PM +0000:
2 > > That's why I have my entire installation over a DM-CRYPT ( LUKS
3 > > encrypted partition... ), including swaps and storage ( LVM over
4 > > DM-CRYPT actually), this way even if someone had a physical access to
5 > > my laptop, both GRUB and LiveCD approach would be useless...
6
7 > I've thought about going for this . . . and then backpedaled once more. Every
8 > time I had a fs problem I have managed to recover to this date without much
9 > trouble. Vanilla primary and extended partitions seem to be straight forward
10 > to access with any LiveCD. To be honest even when I had to frig about with
11 > LVM I managed to recover without loss of data (more out of luck than skill I
12 > suspect). The thought however, that I may lose my private key (never say
13 > never), or lose a drive and need to access my data pronto from a back up
14 > makes me somewhat nervous. Should I be more brave that this?
15 Well it depends... First of all you should know that almost every LiveCD
16 now include a cryptsetup/lvm implementation, Gentoo does, Ubuntu does
17 ( not as is though you should apt-get cryptsetyp, AFAIK lvm already
18 installed), so recovering data would not be that hard if you can open
19 the partition... As for loosing the key, that's easy too, here's what
20 I do: I create a small file from /dev/urandom and I use it as pass key
21 SLOT, and store it somewhere safe, so if and when I forget all of the
22 passwords I have, I use this key, it is safe.
23
24 Anyway as I said above it actually depends, using dm-crypt will lower
25 the performance of your machine which actually make sense since the
26 data are encrypted before they are written to the disk (AFAIK I'm not
27 really sure how it handles I/O operations, but I'm sure that writing a
28 huge file to your HDD will result in a lot of CPU usage of the process
29 'kcryptd'), but using dm-crypt is very very secure, I use it because
30 my laptop is with me every day when I go to the university so I need
31 this kind of security... On the other hand if you don't need
32 encryption, maybe you should stick with LVM... (LVM is a must checkout
33 my partitions below, I love it...)
34
35 --------- CUT
36 # lvdisplay -C
37 LV VG Attr LSize Origin Snap% Move Log Copy% Convert
38 gentoo-opt system -wi-ao 1.00G
39 gentoo-overlays system -wi-ao 1.00G
40 gentoo-root system -wi-ao 500.00M
41 gentoo-usr system -wi-ao 5.00G
42 gentoo-var system -wi-ao 500.00M
43 home system -wi-ao 15.00G
44 storage system -wi-ao 50.66G
45 suspend-swap system -wi-a- 1.00G
46 swap system -wi-ao 2.00G
47 tmp system -wi-ao 500.00M
48 ubuntu-opt system -wi-ao 1.00G
49 ubuntu-root system -wi-ao 500.00M
50 ubuntu-usr system -wi-ao 3.50G
51 ubuntu-var system -wi-ao 500.00M
52 var-tmp system -wi-ao 100.00M
53 --------- CUT
54
55 Regards,
56
57 --
58 Wael Nasreddine
59 http://wael.nasreddine.com
60 PGP: 1024D/C8DD18A2 06F6 1622 4BC8 4CEB D724 DE12 5565 3945 C8DD 18A2
61
62 /ö\
63 /ö\ When Chuck Norris wants an egg, he cracks open a chicken.