[CLUE-Tech] User Mount of Encrypted Volumes vi Loopback

[Keith Hellman]

On Mon, Nov 24, 2003 at 10:18:35PM -0700, Jed S. Baer wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 21:35:03 -0700
> Match Grun <match at dimensional.com> wrote:
> 
> > > I also messed around with also adding options in fstab for the
> > > encryption pieces and loopback, and these all work just fine when
> > > mounting as root.
> > > 
> > 
> > Jed,
> > 
> > Maybe you should mount this as yourself somewhere in your home
> > directory. Don't use fstab, but your .bashrc script to perform the
> > mount. You own the directory and also the mount point so you should not
> > have a permissions problem. This is a similar trick that xfsamba uses to
> > mount smb shares in a users home directory.
> 
> Oh, but I did. Prior to messing about with fstab, I tried just mounting it
> -- standard procedure, such as what you'd use to verify an ISO image
> before burning it. Again, root can do it, ordinary user can't.
 
Try making the loopback device used owned by the user.  Where I work we
do this sort of thing all the (it's part of our build process); the only
missing element is we don't mount with encryption.

If this works for loop devices owned by the user, then you can
- either leave your system hacked up the way it is (ie:  /dev/loop* owned by
  jbaer),
- or you can create special loop devices (probably in your home
  directory) owned by jbaer (you'd have to create this as su).
  Technically, the /home/jbaer/.dev/loopX device files could share the
  same minors as are in your /dev directory, or you can simply allot a
  certain minor range to your user.  Note that you may have to include
  an
    options loop max_loop=SOME_ADEQUATE_NUMBER
  in your modules.conf file and then rmmod loop.o

HTH

-- 
Keith Hellman                             #include <disclaimer.h>
khellman at mcprogramming.com                from disclaimer import standard

"We are born wet, naked, and hungry. Then things get worse."

--Unknown