Arch Linux

maxgiggs

Member

Registered: 2014-06-05

Posts: 32

Problems with LUKS on external drive

Hi everyone!

I'm trying to encrypt an external HDD with dm-crypt/LUKS. The preparation (cgdisk/cryptsetup/mkfs) seems to have worked fine, however I am experiencing the following problems:

1. After the first GNOME/Files automount, I hadn't write permissions: the owner of the root directory was root, hence I had to change the owner to my user. Is this how it is supposed to be? Am I missing something or should I have done something differently?

2. The drive is constantly spinning and the activity led is always blinking. Again, is this normal? What is my HDD doing?

Thanks in advance for your help!

frostschutz

Member

Registered: 2013-11-15

Posts: 1,658

Re: Problems with LUKS on external drive

1. unless you specify a different owner with some mkfs options, most (linux) filesystem default to root:root owner until you mount and chown change it

2. could be ext4 lazy init ... otherwise don't know

romstor

Member

Registered: 2018-08-18

Posts: 54

Re: Problems with LUKS on external drive

1. chown of the mount folder that you have created for the mount should solve this issue. All files and folders under that mount folder inherit ownership and permissions.

2. if you have formatted drive in ext4 -- this is lazy initialization. Have a look at explanation of what is happening and which parameters to use on the mkfs.ext4 command line to avoid this (which is very helpful with removable disks) - Ext4 Filesystem - Lazy Initialization

Awesome description on how to setup an encrypted backup drive: GNU/Linux Crypto: Disks

maxgiggs

Member

Registered: 2014-06-05

Posts: 32

Re: Problems with LUKS on external drive

I think I was being paranoid. This may sound stupid, but I never had to format an external drive to ext4, hence I never had those two (non)issues. Thanks again!