Encryption setup for Linux NAS?
- by Daniel
There's a bazillion hard disk encryption HOWTOs, but somehow I can't find one that actually does what I want. Which is:
I have a home NAS running Ubuntu, which is being accessed by a Linux and a Win XP client. (Hopefully MacOS X soon...) I want to setup encryption for home dirs on the NAS so that:
It does not interfere with the boot process (since the NAS it tucked away in a cupboard),
the home dirs should be accessible as a regular file system on the client(s) (e.g. via SMB),
it is easy to use by 'normal' people, (so it does not require SSH-ing to the NAS, mount the encrypted partition on command line, then connecting via SMB, and finally umount the partition after being done. I can't explain that to my mom, or in fact to anyone.)
does not store the encryption key the NAS itself,
encrypts file meta-data and content (i.e. safe against the 'RIAA' attack, where an intruder should not be able to identify which songs are in your MP3 collection).
What I hoped to do was use Samba + PAM. The idea was that on connecting to the SMB server, I'd have to enter the password on the client, which sends it to the server for authentication, which would use the password to mount the encrpytion partition, and would unmount it again when the session was closed. Turns out that doesn't really work, because SMB does not transmit the password in the plain and hence I can't configure PAM to use the incoming password to mount the encrypted patition.
So... anything I'm overlooking? Is there any way in which I can use the password entered on the client (e.g. on SMB connect) to initiate mounting the encrypted dir on the server?
