On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 6:29 AM, Pawel Jakub Dawidek <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 11:36:29PM -0700, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>> On Oct 16, 2011, at 7:51 PM, Xin LI wrote:
>> > Backward compatibility is that you can expect what's working in an
>> > older version of FreeBSD would just work on a newer version of
>> > FreeBSD, not the contrary.
>>
>> Perhaps, but the fact that this behavior / set of expectations isn't
>> clearly called out in the geli manpage -- and the fact that there isn't
>> official versioning (or at the very least this isn't made a requirement
>> based on the output above) associated with each metadata format is a fault
>> that should be corrected. Otherwise, how can GELI be considered a viable
>> mechanism for encrypting data across multiple versions of FreeBSD? It seems
>> very shortsighted that there isn't at least a mechanism for reading -- or at
>> least rejecting -- later versions of metadata in an intuitive manner.
>> FWIW if you use geli from an earlier version of FreeBSD (hint: chroot,
>> jail), it does the right thing.. which means that I have a means for
>> producing encrypted images on later versions of FreeBSD now. Nevertheless,
>> having to do so in such a roundabout manner is annoying and I'm sure I won't
>> be the only one that will be affected by this.
>
> Thanks Garrett for your comments.
>
> As Xin pointed out, GELI is not forward compatible, but is backwards
> compatible (GELI device initialized on FreeBSD 8.x will work on 9.x, but
> this may not be true the other way around).
>
> I fully agree that the error should be clear on what exactly is wrong
> and this should be easy to fix.
>
> As for creating forward compatible GELI devices I think the right thing
> to do here is to:
> 1. Add '-V version' option for 'geli init' subcommand that will allow to
> specify metadata version number to use for device initialization.
> 2. Add 'geli upgrade [-V <version>] [prov ...]' subcommand that will
> allow to upgrade the given device to the given metadata version (only
> to version greater than the current version). If only providers are
> given, but -V is not given, metadata of the given providers would be
> upgraded to the latest version support by the system.
> Would be nice if backup file could be also upgraded.
> If 'geli upgrade' is executed with no arguments a list of supported
> metadata versions with some short description and ideally FreeBSD
> versions that can run the given GELI version will be printed.
> 3. Print metadata version in 'geli list' output.
That suggestion's brilliant. All that we need now is a short blurb
in the manpage describing when which metadata was implemented when and
I think this will be on the right track.
Thanks a bunch!
-Garrett
_______________________________________________
[email protected] mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-geom
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[email protected]"
