Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Storing ssh and gpg keys in USB flash drives

[Kent Fredric]

On 7/5/07, José González Gómez <jgonzalez.openinput@×××××.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I would like to store my ssh and gpg keys in my usb flash drive, but I'm not
> sure what's the best way to do it:
>
> If I use vfat so I can also read them from Windows I have two problems:
> first you must mount your USB key with a 0077 umask, so ssh and gpg doesn't
> complain about key permissions; latest KDE version seems to auto mount USB
> flash drives using pmount with a 0022 umask and I haven't been able to
> change this, so I either mount it manually or change the permissions after
> being mounted. The second problem is related to gpg: it seems that gpg uses
> links to lock the keyrings, and vfat doesn't support them, so I'm able to
> read keys, but not to make any modfication on them.
>
> If I use ext2 the permission problem goes away (kind of), but I have the
> feeling that this isn't as portable as vfat, as the filesystem uses the user
> id to control access to files, and pluging the drive in another system where
> my user may have anoter uid leads me to chowning/chmoding in the better case
> or not having access to my keys in the worst case.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Best regards
> Jose
>

vfat{
 vfatfiles
 ext2fs{
    gpg_stuff
 }
}

1. Mount vfat drive
2. dd if=/dev/full bs=1048580 count=4096 of =/mountpoint/mynewextfile
3. mkfs.ext2 /mountpoin/mynewextfile
4. mount /mountpoint/mynewextfile/  /someothermountpoint/
5. cp files to /someothermountpoint/
6. use /someothermountpoint/
7. umount /someothermountpoint/
8. umount /mountpoint/

I didn't say it would be pretty, but that is a handy trick to have up the sleve.
that would make a 4 Meg file containing a filesystem to hold your
files, just like a TAR file, except with all the features of ext2 and
no need unpack it to use.

You can do anything with linux, really. Yes. even format a file as a
filesystem and mount it
( a word of warning : dont do this and format with reiserfs and then
store that file on a reiserfs fs ... if you do, next time you need to
--rebuild-tree reiser will try to be smart and trash your drive :) ...
learn't the hard way )

-- 
Kent
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