crypto loopback & recompiling kernels

[garyng]

As far as I know, the loopback device for crypto is a dropped in replacement (loop.o) which is built seperately from the kernel. There is no options in the kernel build tree for that.

You can build it into the kernel. And yep, I think it is called loop.o when it's compiled as a module. The Knoppix compressed loop is cloop.o .

In that case, it would mean copying the related files(there are a number of them like AES etc.) to the kernel tree under block/ ?

Either way, I still don't think there is an option specifically for it as it is to the kernel just a loopback.

[eadz]

As far as I know, the loopback device for crypto is a dropped in replacement (loop.o) which is built seperately from the kernel. There is no options in the kernel build tree for that.

You can build it into the kernel. And yep, I think it is called loop.o when it's compiled as a module. The Knoppix compressed loop is cloop.o .

In that case, it would mean copying the related files(there are a number of them like AES etc.) to the kernel tree under block/ ?

Either way, I still don't think there is an option specifically for it as it is to the kernel just a loopback.

There is an option for losetup - man losetup
- losetup [ -e encryption ] [options] loop_device file


With the patch I used ( internation kernel patch ) it patched the kernel tree, and so did put files in the kernel tree. You have the option of building the cyphers as modules or into the kernel.

[BillyBobber]

-

3comedy: delete all that pr0n and it will speed up just fine!

Im sceptical; 1.5Tb porn? thats way more than me, I'd like to see that.
no really I'd like to see that

Yes. It is a lot of skin. That's what happens when you have a quadruple T1 connection to the internet and 5 computers running 24/7 to do all the crawling & downloading.

I'm down to about 2.8 GB free on the 1.5TB volume. I've been burning to CD to free up the space (I'm on CD #4292) since buying 1.5TB worth of disk space isn't too fun anymore. I also have a 3 foot stack of 80 GB and 120 GB hard drives that are full. I may have to switch to burning DVDs since the CD idea isn't working out too well. I'm working on my web utilities to put it all on-line, allowing people to search by name, description, category, and even rating, but I'm not quite done and we've a little off topic...

[davidHarris]

In case anyone with a similar problem googles into this post Im posting the solution.
What I had failed to do was to grab the very latest util-linux from kernel.org. I thought I had the latest one in Knoppix but in fact if you use the internation crypto patch there is a second patch that has to be applied to util-linux (which contains losetup & mount etc). This is found in the latest loop-AES-v*.tar.gz. Read the README in that file and follow all the instructions. You have to ensure the following: CONFIG_MODULES=y and CONFIG_BLK_DEV_LOOP=n. Once I'd done that & patched the util-liinux source and rebuilt it, the problem below went away and loopback crypto worked fine. HTH

I did this. I just downloaded the kernel source, applied the patch, copied the .config to the source dir, ran "make oldconfig", and then built the kernel and modules.

Then you have to add the modules to /lib/modules and the kernel to the miniroot.gz.

But that was my point: the .config file contains no crypto related options in it, so after you patch the kernel with the international patch how is the .config helping you to select, for example, cryptoapi, cryptoloop, cipher-aes etc.
After I do all the patching cipher module building etc etc All I get after doing losetup ... is ioctl: LOOP_SET_STATUS: Invalid argument
Can you tell me the kernel you used and what patches you used to get functioning loopback crypto.