[TriLUG] private key permission/ownership on removable USB device

[Matt Frye]

Joe,
I had to build an ext3 filesystem on my usb key to do this. 
Obviously, it won't mount on windows boxes now, but that's fine for
me.

A neat side effect of building it ext3 was that the machine I used to
build it now can't boot without the key.  There are easy ways around
this.

Matt Frye


On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 12:43:23 -0500, Mack.Joseph at epamail.epa.gov
<Mack.Joseph at epamail.epa.gov> wrote:
> I need my ssh private keys on several machines at different locations
> over which I don't have a lot of control. The keys are backed up
> to tape and I don't have control of the tapes either. Instead of leaving
> my private key on a whole lot of different disks, I thought of having
> my private key on a mountable usb device (with ext3 filesystem),
> but my uid/gids are different at different locations and the 600 private
> key is only  readable at one location.
> 
> I was hoping that something like
> 
> mount -t ext3  -o uid=my_name,gid=my_group /dev/zip /mnt
> 
> (with /dev/zip owned by root)
> would work, but  these options give errors (bad option).
> `man mount` doesn't show these options for ext2/3 filesystems.
> 
> I then tried mounting the /proc/bus/usb filesystem with devuid=my_name.
> The usb devices are all owned by me, but then the filesystems on
> the usb device still have their original ownerships
> 
> How do I use a removable private key on different machines?
> 
> Thanks Joe
> 
> ---
> Joseph Mack PhD, High Performance Computing & Scientific Visualisation
> LMIT, Supporting the EPA Research Triangle Park, NC 919-541-0007
> Federal Contact - John B. Smith 919-541-1087 - smith.john at epa.gov
> 
> --
> TriLUG mailing list        : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ  : http://trilug.org/faq/
> TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
> TriLUG PGP Keyring         : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
>