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Date:      Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:56:44 -0400
From:      Steve Bertrand <iaccounts@ibctech.ca>
To:        Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Daniel Marsh <jahilliya@gmail.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Booting a GELI encrypted hard disk
Message-ID:  <4720BCBC.9080800@ibctech.ca>
In-Reply-To: <20071024173858.GA1119@garage.freebsd.pl>
References:  <470CCDE2.9090603@ibctech.ca> <20071010175349.GB9770@slackbox.xs4all.nl> <20071022174629.GA1118@garage.freebsd.pl> <1799.208.70.104.211.1193103682.squirrel@webmail.ibctech.ca> <ba5e78ea0710240946m41582e38g6507df7fe53b1016@mail.gmail.com> <20071024173858.GA1119@garage.freebsd.pl>

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Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 12:46:53AM +0800, Daniel Marsh wrote:
>> Even if all data on a drive is encrypted, the partition table is not.
>> Software based disk encryption works on partitions.
> 
> That's not true. One can configure full disk encryption using GELI. To
> do it you need to have a small USB pen-drive or CD-ROM with /boot/
> directory, but that's all you need. Then you actually boot from your
> unencrypted pen-drive, but mount all file systems from encrypted disk.
> The pen-drive is not needed for your system to run and you can be easly
> take it with you, which is not always the case for your laptop.

This is EXACTLY what I have now. Soon as the machine is booted, my thumb
disk comes with me.

The ONLY information on the thumb drive is /boot, a directory /keys and
an /etc that has only an fstab (to mount the .eli partitions from the
hard disk) and a loader.conf file to locate the keys.

This was originally my objective and have got it in place. Now the
machine is nearly upgraded to 7.0.

Steve



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