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RE: knoppix question
by Brian Densmore 15 Dec '04

15 Dec '04

> -----Original Message----- > From: D. Joe > > On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 10:42:38AM -0600, Brian Densmore wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: D. Joe > > > > > > On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 08:48:20AM -0600, Brian Densmore wrote: > > > > I've booted Knoppix on my laptop which only has 96MB RAM. > > > > I didn't touch any keys to do this. Now to be fair there is > > > > a swap partition on the drive and it may have seen this and > > > > used it. In fact the creators would be foolish not to look > > > > for and use it. > > > > > > How foolish it is depends on what you use the disk for. > > > > Yes, it is all relative, but based on the designed use/audience > > for Knoppix (aka, GUI desktop, Linux newbies, Windows users), > > it would be most desirable to boot using as much power and with > > as little interaction as possible. Hence I made my comment > [. . . ] > > >From the knoppix.org main page (English version): > > "KNOPPIX can be used as a Linux demo, educational CD, rescue > system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial > software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything > on a hard disk." > > So, I guess it depends on how one reads that list--as a set of > design goals in order of decreasing importance to the designer, > or as a simple enumeration of the kinds of uses one might > anticipate. I am not contesting the usefulness for Knoppix, but they do state Linux demo and educational CD *before* rescue system. Any Linux distro can be used as a rescue system, so stating that as a goal is redundant. > > I suspect you've conflated the design goals of the disk with the > uses to which you put it. Perhaps, but we differ in our interpretations. Yours is perfectly valid and I consider mine so also. Opinions are after all opinions. > > > as I said before Knoppix isn't the ideal distro for > > troubleshooting broken systems. There are much better choices > > for such tasks. > > How many different live CDs have you used to fix broken systems, I have no need to fix broken systems. I have not had a broken system since switching to Linux 7 years ago (or more). [That is not to say that I haven't trashed my system by doing stupid experiments, but I have not had a system break. In these times tomsrtbt was all I needed. Or a new install of an upgraded version. I have yet to lose a single character of data from a Linux system. I have trashed: programs, libraries , rpm databases, and gentoo configurations. None of which, I suspect, could be fixed neatly by any tool.] > > How suited KNOPPIX is depends on the specific task at hand: True. I was merely stating that *if I were to want to fix a broken system* I wouldn't want to wait for X to boot, for KDE to launch, etc. I am, I guess of the old school that way. If you need to fix something, do it from the CLI. It's faster and you most likely will have more control. But then I don't do much in the way of fixing broken/borked Windows. I find it saves me having to digest massive quantities of Mylanta. ;') IMHO, Brian Densmore

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RE: Lexar Secure Jumpdrives
by Brian Densmore 15 Dec '04

15 Dec '04

> -----Original Message----- > From: Jason Clinton > > > On Tuesday 14 December 2004 11:14, Brian Kelsay wrote: > > That, my friend, was an awesome post. This may sound like > a simple thing ... > > *chuckle* Thanks for the compliment! I'll add that to my list of > awesome-projects-I'll-get-to-someday-soon. ;) I second Brian's statement. I would only add one thing to that idea. I would make the script the default mount command and pass thru the mount command to the real mount command unless it was one of the "encrypted devices". Ok two things, I would also add an option to require a password or passphrase rather than just a public/private key scheme. > > ... easy to _not_ forget. Losing your private key is a very nasty > proposition -- > publishing revocation certificates is _not_ a fun thing. > Why is that? I would think you would want to do this every so often, to ensure a bit more security. Especially since it's relatively easy now to build a really powerful mainframe cheaply, that can do nothing but crack private/public keys. Not to mention the fact that the encryption techniques we thought were so secure turn out to have problems too. When is there going to be another key signing event?

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RE: knoppix question
by Brian Densmore 15 Dec '04

15 Dec '04

> -----Original Message----- > From: D. Joe > > On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 08:48:20AM -0600, Brian Densmore wrote: > > I've booted Knoppix on my laptop which only has 96MB RAM. > > I didn't touch any keys to do this. Now to be fair there is > > a swap partition on the drive and it may have seen this and > > used it. In fact the creators would be foolish not to look > > for and use it. > > How foolish it is depends on what you use the disk for. Yes, it is all relative, but based on the designed use/audience for Knoppix (aka, GUI desktop, Linux newbies, Windows users), it would be most desirable to boot using as much power and with as little interaction as possible. Hence I made my comment based on the intended use and audience for Knoppix. My wife who is rather PC-illiterate, wouldn't know how to respond for a request to mount a swap disk partition and would probably make her nervous and she'd probably get frustrated and give up trying to use it. So I stand by my original statement. Certainly there are risks in doing that, but as I said before Knoppix isn't the ideal distro for troubleshooting broken systems. There are much better choices for such tasks. Brian

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OT: more cleaning
by Ben Kelley 15 Dec '04

15 Dec '04

Free to the first person to claim them. 2 HP customer education 3 ring binders with the following content: HP-UX System Administration for Series 300/400/700 Unix Systems Basics II They came with the cube I moved into, and I never found a need for them. Maybe someone here would want them?

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Re: Lexar Secure Jumpdrives
by Brian Kelsay 14 Dec '04

14 Dec '04

That, my friend, was an awesome post. This may sound like a simple thing to you, since you have been dealing with encryption for a while, but have you thought of doing a detailed write-up and sample scripts to get a person new to encryption started? That would be a cool thing to post to http://www.gnupg.org/(en)/documentation/howtos.html or as a small project on freshmeat. (e.g. Encrypted Jumpdrive/Pendrive Howto) Just a thought. Yes, the attempt to be cross-platform is usually the wrench in the works. I have seen some real small USB fobs that I think only carry an encryption key. They are only about a half inch long or just a bit more. Have you seen those and do they work in Linux? If they work, they might be just the thing. I imagine that if you look at them in Linux, you will find that they only contain a fat16 filesystem with 1-8 MB of flash, maybe less. A private key takes up how much space if it is in a text file or compressed? Not much, maybe a few kb. Brian Kelsay >>> Jason Clinton <me(a)jasonclinton.com> 12/14/04 10:55AM >>> Well, I put all the questions here together because my suggestion encompasses all of them. The Lexar encryption hardware is not compatible with Linux; it's done in hardware and, IIRC, it's extremely simple (easy to crack) but no device driver exists. Rather than worry about having enough size on either the encrypted partition or the non-encrypted partition, I suggest that you partition and format the whole thing in VFAT32 and place a copy of gnupg on the device. There's a number of ways that you can do it but here's one scenario that can vary in size and is compatible with Windows unlike the loopback file system method: On your Linux systems, you have a /usr/local/bin/mount script that you manually invoke that mounts the /dev/sd? device to /mnt/cf0. It then looks for /mnt/cf0/encrypted_archive.tar.gz and executes gnupg with your private key from your home directory and decompresses the archive to some place in /tmp or /home/~. You have another /usr/local/bin/umount script that reverses all of those steps: wrap up the changes in the directory, encrypt _against_your_public key_ on the device, unmount. On your Windows systems, the exact same process takes place but it's all automatic via the autorun.inf file using MING32 compiled gnupg.exe, tar.exe and gzip.exe on the device. If you take your device to another person's system, you will need to explore some of the many ways that you can securely access your private key from remote locations (perhaps even a separate, 8MB pen drive to store your private key -- they make watches that do that that have USB connectors). That way, if you lose the device, the person would need both the private key and the password to access the data. Regarding the existing software on the device, there's no danger in losing any of it unless you want the Windows-only, weak encryption to work with Windows. This all sounds rather complicated but in practice, good encryption is hard work and the cross-platform nature makes it even more complicated. Good encryption is not yet a commodity.

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Lexar Secure Jumpdrives
by Brian Densmore 14 Dec '04

14 Dec '04

Anyone have one of these or something similar? I got one for my birthday, and immediately plugged it into my laptop and created a directory and copied some pix of my daughter to it. I noticed it had a file structure already on it along with some Windows and Mac software. I brought it in to the office to see if I could read the directory and sure enough it worked. It did complain about a corrupt file system. I also ran the secure disk software on it to repartition the stick as half secure and half not. My question, would it be possible to reformat the stick with an encrypted Linux fs and is so how would I be able to access it from Windows and Macs? Also, by securing half the card, will I still be able to use the whole stick in Linux? Another question, the stick has an autorun script for Windows, if I were to wipe the Windows software off of the stick would Windows still autodetect the stick and mount it? Or is it only autodetecting because of the autorun. I have a W2K desktop. Brian Densmore

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RE: Lexar Secure Jumpdrives
by Brian Densmore 14 Dec '04

14 Dec '04

> -----Original Message----- > From: Brian Kelsay > > Win2k and XP will auto detect the drive, it is 98 that ... Ok, that what I figured. > The reason Linux found the drive is the filesystem is plain > old vfat (fat16). Not real efficient, but it works with ... Well, I'd have thought Linux would detect it regardless of choice of fs, afterall is should appear as a harddrive even if there is no fs on it. > but if you still want to get to the > drive easily under windows, leave part of it as fat16. Same > goes for if you plan to boot to the drive. You didn't give > it's size, so I can't be more precise. If you plan to > encrypt w/ a Linux-based filesystem good luck. There is a > ext2fs driver/program/reader/whatever for NT/2k/XP, but I've > not used it. YMMV. It is likely to be beta... I'm not too concerned about using it in windows. I would like to keep that compatibility, but I'd like to be able to encrypt it, not that I have anything of value I plan on putting on it. It's a 128MB just like Jeremy's. I plan on just playing with it to see what I want to use it for. Probably I'll wind up just carrying around pix of my daughter, and the occasional work documents. It's just a toy for now. I do think I'll try to boot my desktop from it. I don't think the laptop will boot from it, but the desktop just might. > On the corrupt filesystem, just let MS run checkdisk at boot Well, I thought it might have something to do with using Linux to access the disk first and creating a directory and placing files on it. Which when I ran the secure disk software it so nicely destroyed, so when they tell you to back up the data, they really mean it. It would have been nice to get the message *before* it trashed the disk (well technically it did, it didn't trash the files until I ok'ed the message [only option was to ok] that told me to back up my files). But that was one of the things I was testing for anyway. I'm wondering if it's possible to download the pictures from my camera directly onto the disk. Probably not, I think I have a USB connector to connect to the camera, but that's to plug into a PC with. It's an older digital. A 1.2MP Canon. Takes quite nice pix. Good lenses and capturing. Excellent colors and resolution. Thanks for you input Brian and Jeremy. Brian

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Q1 04 Meeting schedule
by Jim Herrmann 14 Dec '04

14 Dec '04

FYI, I'm not going to be able to make any meetings for a few months, so I would recommend that someone else book the room for the next quarter. Thanks, Jim -- Progressive Values ARE American Values Responsibility, Empathy, Freedom, Opportunity, Prosperity, Fairness, Trust, Honesty, Open Communication, Community, Cooperation

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RE: Lexar Secure Jumpdrives
by Brian Kelsay 13 Dec '04

13 Dec '04

Brian Kelsay >>> "Brian Densmore" <> 12/13/04 12:02PM >>> >I do think I'll try to boot >my desktop from it. I don't think the laptop will boot from it, >but the desktop just might. The DamnSmall FTP site has a floppy .img that I have used to successfully bootstrap and hand off to a USB jumpdrive. >I'm wondering if it's possible to download the pictures from my >camera directly onto the disk. Probably not, I think I have a USB >connector to connect to the camera, but that's to plug into a PC with. >It's an older digital. A 1.2MP Canon. Takes quite nice pix. Good lenses >and capturing. Excellent colors and resolution. Nope, need a PC for that unless you get some new fancy dancy camera w/ the feature. The ones with SD/MMC flash memory cards can be put directly into certain printers that will print w/out a PC. I was looking at some big screen TVs lately that also had SD flash and Sony Memstick slots to view pictures w/out a PC. For those you could bank on needing the unencrypted fat16 filesystem as they come form the factory. At least until world domination is achieved.

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Re: Lexar Secure Jumpdrives
by Brian Kelsay 13 Dec '04

13 Dec '04

Win2k and XP will auto detect the drive, it is 98 that probably needs the auto installer software. ME may or not work the same as XP, but as others on this list know, I don't give a flip about the kludge that is ME. The reason Linux found the drive is the filesystem is plain old vfat (fat16). Not real efficient, but it works with everything and the drive size is small enough unless you get the 1GB and up drives that any performance loss of fat16 won't matter. You could repartition and give half over to ext2fs or any other, but if you still want to get to the drive easily under windows, leave part of it as fat16. Same goes for if you plan to boot to the drive. You didn't give it's size, so I can't be more precise. If you plan to encrypt w/ a Linux-based filesystem good luck. There is a ext2fs driver/program/reader/whatever for NT/2k/XP, but I've not used it. YMMV. It is likely to be beta. Actually NT won't even factor in the equation, because only one mfgr of jump drives makes a USB stack for NT. NT was unable to use USB unless you bought some add-on software. On the corrupt filesystem, just let MS run checkdisk at boot if it comes up and possibly correct the calculations on the FAT table partition sizes. QTparted can repartition disks just like Partition Magic, but there is almost always some complaint from Windows on the first boot after repartitioning w/ it. Let the checkdisk run BEFORE you actually put any important data on it. Just a friendly warning. I've been using jump drives and USB mass storage devices for quite a while now. One further warning, don't waste your time with putting ZipSlack in any form on the jump drive. Use DamnSmall Linux if you need/want to experiment w/ booting Linux from USB. Zipslack and those based on it have too many individual files and it takes forever to copy them over. DamnSmall and the Knoppix derivatives use the compressed filesystem and you are just copying one big file over basically. Anytime you are copying a large number of files to the jumpdrive, even at USB 2.0 speeds, it takes a long time. This is possibly a failing of fat16 showing. Brian Kelsay >>> "Brian Densmore" <DensmoreB(a)ctbsonline.com> 12/13/04 10:53AM >>> Anyone have one of these or something similar? I got one for my birthday, and immediately plugged it into my laptop and created a directory and copied some pix of my daughter to it. I noticed it had a file structure already on it along with some Windows and Mac software. I brought it in to the office to see if I could read the directory and sure enough it worked. It did complain about a corrupt file system. I also ran the secure disk software on it to repartition the stick as half secure and half not. My question, would it be possible to reformat the stick with an encrypted Linux fs and is so how would I be able to access it from Windows and Macs? Also, by securing half the card, will I still be able to use the whole stick in Linux? Another question, the stick has an autorun script for Windows, if I were to wipe the Windows software off of the stick would Windows still autodetect the stick and mount it? Or is it only autodetecting because of the autorun. I have a W2K desktop.

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