[linux-lvm] LVM and Truecrypt

Gordon Fogus gordon.fogus at gmail.com
Thu May 7 02:19:37 UTC 2009


Hello Sven (and all),

I have been concerned that a failure on one of the disk controllers would
result in data loss in the following way:
1. A mainboard fails that has a JOBD RAID connected
2. The mainboard is replaced and the drives from the original set are
connected.
3. Because of hardware changes and/or operating system changes and/or "disk
order" changes, no data can be read from the RAID.
I'd be curious to know this: if I had a JOBD under LVM and I tried to plug
the disks into another PC entirely, would I be able to read the files I had
on those drives?  How does LVM know which drive was where in the order of
drives in the JOBD?

I am not actually worried about data loss from a drive failure.  I backup
regularly (but I have never had a hard drive fail.  I attribute this partly
to the temperature at which I keep my drives).  I have had several RAID
controller failures (which is why I no longer consider any RAID level to be
a backup).

By asking, "Is there any partuclar reason for using truecrypt?" do you mean,
"Why truecrypt as opposed to any other encryption solution?"?  If so, I use
truecrypt because it is opensource and has received a lot of attention from
experienced cryptographers.  I wouldn't trust closed source or obscure
encryption software.  On the other hand, if you were asking, "Why use
encryption?", then you might be interested in Sans news bites:
http://www.sans.org/newsletters/newsbites/ .  Sans covers many data leaks.

(Do you live in Scandinavia?)

Gordon

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 5:08 PM, Sven Eschenberg
<sven at whgl.uni-frankfurt.de>wrote:

> Hi Gordon,
>
> Is there any particular Reason, why a mainboard failure should result in
> massive data loss?
> But you can be assured, that a disk failure in such a volume will most
> certainly result in massive dataloss, since the filesystem spans across all
> disks.
> Is there any partuclar reason for using truecrypt?
>
> Regards
>
> -Sven
>
> Gordon Fogus schrieb:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I am trying to create a 10TB network share (like a NAS share, but with
>> permission levels) on a dedicated GNU+Linux server to be used on a
>> Linux/Windows network.
>>
>> I must use truecrypt for full drive encryption. I need the disks to be
>> independently mountable (no striping, parity bits or files spanning across
>> physical drives) (this is because I am afraid of massive data loss from a
>> mainboard failure.  If you can show me that this fear is unfounded and that
>> I would definitely be able to recover my data after a mainboard failure,
>> then I would not hesitate to use files spanning across drives). Most
>> importantly, the combined space of the disks (10TB) must appear as 10TB on
>> the network, not 10 @ 1TB drives (if I were using 1TB drives, for example).
>> Resonable continuous write speed is also a factor for me.
>> It is essential that this drive space can be "mounted" (i.e., "mount
>> network drive") on a Windows machine.
>> Different folders must be able to have different permissionn levels for
>> different users, similar to the permission levels available in Microsoft
>> shares (write new files/edit files/delete files/make new folders/delete
>> folders/etc.).  After someone connects to the file server, he must not be
>> able to access every file, only those specificly shared to him.
>>
>> Can someone point me to info on using truecrypt with LVM?
>> (I am new to GNU+Linux.  File serving on a Windows Active Directory server
>> is... unpredictable.)
>>
>> Gordon
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> linux-lvm at redhat.com
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-lvm
>> read the LVM HOW-TO at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/
>>
>
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>
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