[NBLUG/talk] Crypt Filesystems

[Walter Hansen]

Lincoln Peters wrote:
> On Jul 30, 2006, at 12:40 AM, Jacob Appelbaum wrote:
>> Hrm. That's a shame. I don't suggest you recompile your kernel for this
>> as it's not needed. Loop-aes is only a patch to the loop module and thus
>> it's not required to recompile anything unless the loop device is
>> compiled in (which it's not by default in debian).
> 
> Why not use dm-crypt?  You'd get the same results while eliminating the 
> overhead of a loopback filesystem.  I can't see any advantage to 
> loop-aes (or any sort of cryptoloop) unless you're trying to encrypt 
> something that can't be written to the same way as a standard block 
> device (e.g. a CD or DVD).
> 
> I don't know if a kernel recompile would be needed to support dm-crypt 
> on Debian, as I have not used the stock kernels in Debian (i.e. I've 
> built my own) for years.  You probably wouldn't, though, as the 
> userspace tools for managing dm-crypt are available in the apt 
> repository, and I would be surprised if they're available but the 
> dm-crypt module itself isn't.

I did try a dm-crypt install friday night, but it did not go. Looks like 
device-mapper drivers are missing from the kernel. So likely that method 
would requre a re-compile also.

I don't have a fear of compiling a custom kernel, but I'm running a 
debian sarge amd 64 kernel and I'm concerned that this would mess up how 
the apt-get works for some reason. Also I'm not at all sure what the 
debian way for compiling a kernel (and a pretty custom one [64bit]) goes.