[aklug] Re: Encryption with cryptsetup and luksformat

From: Damien Hull <damien@linuxninjas.tv>
Date: Fri Jan 09 2009 - 17:54:40 AKST

Cool! I'll have to try that one of these days. Better learn how how the dd process works before I really need it.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Arthur Corliss" <acorliss@nevaeh-linux.org>
To: "Damien Hull" <damien@linuxninjas.tv>
Cc: aklug@aklug.org
Sent: Friday, January 9, 2009 3:48:02 PM GMT -09:00 Alaska
Subject: Re: [aklug] Encryption with cryptsetup and luksformat

On Fri, 9 Jan 2009, Damien Hull wrote:

> I've got an old external USB drive that I hand encrypted with luksformat a few years back. It was done before there were any GUI tools. I plugged it into my Ubuntu 8.10 workstation today.
>
> 1. Dialog box popped up and asked for a password
> 2. Error message saying cryptsetup was missing
> 3. Added crypt setup
> 4. No luck with the pass phrases I tried - couldn't remember
> 5. Gave the CLI a try
> 6. GOT IT!
>
> The drive now has new data on it. It's sitting inside a safe deposit box at the bank. With all the trouble I went through getting access I'm a little concerned. Is there a chance luksformat will change and cut off access to my encrypted drive?

I wouldn't worry about it too much. LUKS isn't really a format, it just
creates a special header for the partition with the cipher, key size, and
the encrypted master key lives. You can always extract that via dd and
manually decrypt the filesystem information to an image and mount it via a
loopback mount.

I wouldn't sweat it, it's easy enough to maintain by the community that I
expect it'll be around a long time.

         --Arthur Corliss
           Live Free or Die

-- 
Damien Hull
Linux Ninja
Open Source Assassin
http://linuxninjas.tv
http://elite.linuxninjas.tv
http://www.digital-overload.net
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Received on Fri Jan 9 17:54:55 2009

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