Comments on: Encrypt devices using dm-crypt and LUKS

By: angelina nieves

angelina nieves — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:29:31 +0000

Thanks GNot. Sorry for the long interval. I shelved the dm-crypt project since and now just got back. hope you can still reply.

Anyway, when I did the steps I mentioned, I was indeed running as root. Still can’t figure out what I do wrong.

By: EckY

EckY — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 20:03:20 +0000

Great Work . What a useful HowTo :-D , thx

By: GNot

GNot — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 23:18:15 +0000

Hello Kate. Very convenient! Thanks.
I will add some info and links in the main article when I have the time.

By: Kate Ward

Kate Ward — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:28:01 +0000

You might take a look at a script I wrote called luksmount that automates a lot of the mounting and unmounting headaches of LUKS.

By: gtkfreak

gtkfreak — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 04:21:09 +0000

I use Fedora Core 6. losetup -d /dev/loop0 does not work. Is there any reason why? I am logged in as a normal user, then done a su for container encryption. Everything works fine, except the destroy of the losetup -d /dev/loop0. When I check the process status, the [loop] is still visible there. But even a kill does not remove that process.

By: GNot

GNot — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 22:03:31 +0000

Hi Santiago.

Indeed, shred is an excellent alternative.

The greatest question with filling the disk with random data, regardless of the generator that is used, is how long it will take to complete the operation. Generally, it takes long, but I think that using shred will require much more time, but I haven’t tried it.

By: Santiago Urueña

Santiago Urueña — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 12:26:30 +0000

Filling the disk with random data before encrypting is a good habit and it strengthens security as well.

In my opinion, a better approach is to use 'shred' from GNU coreutils, a tool that really performs a secure delete of a file or a complete device, and also fill the disk with random data...

By: GNot

GNot — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 10:34:58 +0000

@Andre: Judging by its feature list, FreeOTFE is a very interesting application. I noticed that it supports dm-crypt and LUKS, which makes it possible to read LUKS formatted volumes in the Wndows OS. This may prove to be very useful. Thanks. @SK: Also, there is a very handy utility I happen to like very much, called pv. This is a pipe monitoring utility. When injected between two pipes, it displays the progress of the data flow through the pipe. I highly recommend it. Also, thanks for the info about the SIGUSR1 signal. I did not know about it.

By: SK

SK — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 06:26:59 +0000

“The worst thing is that there is no progress indicator…” true, but sending a SIGUSR1 signal to the process does give you some stats, on Linux at least.

By: Andre

Andre — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 21:49:58 +0000

Hello,

Nice guide. Just would like to add that you can use FreeOTFE to read Linux-encrypted partitions:

http://www.freeotfe.org/

I haven’t used it yet, but there is a complete section on their manual about how to create the encrypted volumes on Linux and accesssing them on Windows.