On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 12:51 AM, Andreas Jellinghaus
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Alon mentioned:
> > Look also into [1].
> > [1] http://wiki.tuxonice.net/EncryptedSwapAndRoot
>
> hmm. looks interesting, here is my quick review:
> * normal suspend worked fine for me, so unless tuxonice has a degression or a
> different interface, the suspend mechanism in your kernel shouldn't matter.
> (but I must admit, I haven't looked into the suspend evolution too close in
> the last few years, but I saw the flame-war on linux-kernel about different
> camps with different ideas, so I guess my knowledge is out-dated.)

No...
You got all wrong.
This all about on who strong you want to protect the data.

> * loop-aes? sorry, but loop devices have inherent problems, even if nearly
>  noone triggers them, and I see no reason to not use the modern dm-crypt
>  in general. given the "discussion" I read about loop-aes once, I rather
>  not use it, it gave me some bad feeling.

Separate between "modern" filesystem methods and encryption scheme.
loop-aes uses 65 symmetric keys for encryption which is much stronger
than any other available method in Linux/Windows and much like the commercial
alternatives.

So unless dm-crypt will be able to support a decent encryption scheme
it is unusable.

> * aespipe? ok,for "on the fly" decryption, but I never had that as a goal.

This is required only for conversion to/out none encrypted disk.

> * compile static apps? oh, ok, I know many people like their initramfs static,
>  but I think it is a waste of ram, doubles complexity, wastes cpu cycles,
>  and like to point out, that even 200MB+ initramfs files work great for me
>  (build with glibc, sometimes containing even all the /usr/share/doc files
>  if I was too lazy to strip them down - any initramfs file works great for
>  me, if the machine has twice as much ram as least. and I find building
>  huge initramfs with debootstrap soo much easier...)
>  (but this is personal taste as you can see)

You can do whatever you like, the suggestion of static is irrelevant
to encryption.
You can do whatever you like.

> * initrd_util? not sure what it exactly does, but I prefer using the
>  distributions initramfs tools, only adding a few lines of shell code and
>  extra files, and not replace the whole initramfs (which I fear this does)
>  (ah, later the whole content is shown, so this indead seams to have the
>  goal of "creating a new initramfs" / not modifying the one your distribution
>  creates/ships.

OK.
While your distribution probably do not support whatever you like.

> * one key per partition looks fine. but 2925 files and then uuencoded and
>  than encrypted with gpg? strange, and I distrust what I don't understand.
>  on the other hand I hope the plain openssl rsa key encryption I implemented
>  in my scripts is secure, only a real crypto expert can tell.

As I said:
RSA2048(Key256) is weaker than Key256.
So it better to store Key256 on smartcard/pgp file.
Or... better store 65*Key256 (loop-aes) and have a decent encryption.

Again...
If you encrypt your disk you do this for a reason.
If you just want to show off to other people that you have encrypted
disk you can use simple encryption.
If you want to *REALLY* be secured, you cannot be satisfied with the
simple encryptions even on the
price of some complexity.

> * how does it support usb smart card readers/token plugged in after boot up?
>  I don't see udev, hal or hotplug. maybe I miss something? busybox does this?

Yes.

Alon.
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