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Date:      Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:21:41 +0000
From:      Hugo Silva <hugo@barafranca.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: How safe is encrypted disks? (data integrity)
Message-ID:  <45817A15.1030405@barafranca.com>
In-Reply-To: <17489c7a0612140525i46b19403k96ac866be59ca951@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <457C686E.5050504@locolomo.org> <20061214132434.5ac20b82@localhost> <17489c7a0612140525i46b19403k96ac866be59ca951@mail.gmail.com>

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Chad Gross wrote:
> On 12/14/06, Fabian Keil <freebsd-listen@fabiankeil.de> wrote:
>>
>> Erik Norgaard <norgaard@locolomo.org> wrote:
>>
>> > I have been thinking to make /home on my laptop encrypted - seems 
>> like a
>> > good idea if it gets stolen. Now, how safe is this? Not in terms of 
>> the
>> > strength of the encryption algorithm, but in terms of integrity.
>>
>> I have no insight on the code, but as nobody else answered,
>> my response may be better than nothing.
>>
>> > What happens in case of power failure, the battery runs out or system
>> > crashes for whatever reason?
>>
>> I have my home slice encrypted with GELI for several month now
>> and so far I didn't notice any effects on the data integrity.
>>
>> I experienced several system crashes and one or two power failures
>> do to empty battery but I didn't lose any data already saved
>> on the disk (that I know of).
>>
>> The only inconvenience is that the system boots to single-user
>> mode if the home slice isn't clean and I then have to fsck it
>> manually.
>>
>> At that point the password for the key is already entered,
>> so I'm not sure why the slice can't be fscked automatically.
>> It could be the .eli extension, but I didn't investigate this
>> any further.
>>
>> Fabian
>> -- 
>> http://www.fabiankeil.de/
>>
>>
>>
> Erik,
>
> I also use geli and it works great. I have had power failures as well and
> have not lost any data upon reboot.
>
> Fabian,
>
> Yes the manual fsck is a pain. I am not sure why it has to be done 
> manually
> either, but I don't think it is just the .eli extension.  Did you 
> notice you
> have to specify that it is UFS as well?
>
>
>
> Another thing to consider is the performance hit when using geli with 
> a high
> encryption. I have mine set to the highest (I think) bit possible and 
> when
> transferring anything ~500MB+ it lags the system a bit to do the 
> encryption.
>
>
> Chad
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Just another reply to say it works fine, I have a /private partition on 
my laptop using GELI for months, without any problems.

Since it's not /home (so, not automounted), I have a little script to 
mount it, which includes a fsck (with some special flags, I'd have to 
turn the laptop on as I don't remember them, but man fsck should reveal 
them right away).


Hugo



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