Hi fellow selfhoster,
Im a bit lost on the following scenario and im unable to find any documentation about it so i was hoping some smart people here could point me in the right direction.
I have a linux software raid 6 that contains a LUKS partition with ext4 in it. I would like to automount the ext4 when im rebooting. The root partition is also using LUKS and i have successfully setup the decryption for this parition but im uncertain on how to do this with this raid setup since im not sure where in the boot process linux recognizes my raid and when the decryption happens.
This is what i have:
[root@nfs-rocky-1 ~]# cat /etc/mdadm.conf
ARRAY /dev/md/server1:0 metadata=1.2 UUID=3e198408:2236ed3d:1dc13a8e:e5f91e52
On a reboot the raid does get automaticly recognizes but i still have to do cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/md0 raid & mount /dev/mapper/raid /mnt/data.
What would be the best way to do this? Im a bit scared of doing this im not certain of since i don’t want my machine to be stuck at a boot.
Just a like to an article that dicusses something like this already would help me greatly.


@Hercules I have a similar setup with RAID1 and BTRFS.
I’m using a keyfile for that:
dd bs=512 count=4 if=/dev/random of=/etc/crypttab.d/keyfile-data.bin iflag=fullblock
chmod 600 /etc/crypttab.d/keyfile-data.bin
cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/mapper/raid /etc/crypttab.d/keyfile-data.bin --new-key-slot 1
entry in /etc/crypttab:
data UUID=<blkid from /dev/md0> /etc/crypttab.d/keyfile-data.bin luks
entry in /etc/fstab:
UUID=<blkid from /dev/mapper/raid> /mnt/data …
Another way can be pam_mount, which I’m using on an SBC for opening an encrypted device:
https://inai.de/projects/pam/_mount/
:D while your steps were very clear i think i fked up.
cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/mapper/raid /etc/crypttab.d/keyfile-data.bin --new-key-slot 1gave:Device /dev/mapper/raid is not a valid LUKS device.. I assume this is a typo from your end since/dev/md0is my luks volume. But altering this gave me:slot is already in usekind of error.That can be explained since i tested something simular like you suggested earlier. Afterwhich i removed my key i generated and added to the volume. Then i did
cryptsetup luksRemoveKey /dev/md0.Now when i try to add it i get
No key available with this passphrase.I don’t have enough knowledge about cryptsetup to know what excactly i did wrong.
Do you by any change have an explaination?
In case this is usefull:
[root@nfs-rocky-1 ~]# cryptsetup luksDump /dev/md0 LUKS header information Version: 2 Epoch: 6 Metadata area: 16384 [bytes] Keyslots area: 16744448 [bytes] UUID: 485df758-6cec-49e3-aceb-438aaaedc833 Label: (no label) Subsystem: (no subsystem) Flags: (no flags) Data segments: 0: crypt offset: 16777216 [bytes] length: (whole device) cipher: aes-xts-plain64 sector: 4096 [bytes] Keyslots: 1: luks2 Key: 512 bits Priority: normal Cipher: aes-xts-plain64 Cipher key: 512 bits PBKDF: argon2id Time cost: 4 Memory: 1048576 Threads: 4 Salt: 17 c5 ff 7f b9 10 43 41 16 5a c8 28 44 b9 df 64 a8 1d 40 41 9f a1 70 85 34 06 52 8d ba 29 bd ef AF stripes: 4000 AF hash: sha256 Area offset:290816 [bytes] Area length:258048 [bytes] Digest ID: 0 2: luks2 Key: 512 bits Priority: normal Cipher: aes-xts-plain64 Cipher key: 512 bits PBKDF: argon2id Time cost: 12 Memory: 1048576 Threads: 4 Salt: 64 97 db 49 f1 18 b9 57 3b 02 53 37 b3 11 8e 44 71 d1 70 b2 b9 58 4c db e2 6b 36 95 7c dd d2 be AF stripes: 4000 AF hash: sha256 Area offset:548864 [bytes] Area length:258048 [bytes] Digest ID: 0 Tokens: Digests: 0: pbkdf2 Hash: sha256 Iterations: 105703 Salt: ae ac f1 9f df 47 27 9e 64 28 52 53 9a 9b cd 77 74 15 66 f6 8b 3c bd f4 29 dc f1 b1 c5 15 3b f6 Digest: 07 5f 2f 6b d3 c5 bf b6 54 58 5e b4 44 df 8c b8 2b da fa 5c 40 a5 89 cc 0e 3b 70 69 57 d5 7c f5 [root@nfs-rocky-1 ~]#@Hercules My exampled assumed, that you only have a password set on keyslot 0.
LUKS keyslots are starting at 0, so it seems, that you deleted the initial set password.
I hope, you know the other keyslots.
As far I can see, you can specify, which keyslot has to be selected for unlocking the volume key.
More information you can find in the man page.
man cryptsetup-luksaddkey cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/md0 --new-key-slot 0 --key-slot 1Just to give you an update. The other keyslot was the key i added earlier for testing which i removed … So its time for me to copy over a lot of data to another system en recreate the luks volume. Thanks for your help!
Is the
/etc/crypttab.dpath that you are using specificly chosen or can it be whatever? This path doesn’t exists on my system and online i don’t see any mentions of it.@Hercules I created it on my own, because I have some keys for other devices, too.
But you can place it, where you want.
But with crypttab.d I have a simple connection to crypttab configuration file.
the crypttab.d thing is called a drop-in directory. linux will read files you make in these and overwrite the config files with the values in the drop-in files. it’s a way to add your own edits to config files without editing the default config files directly, so you don’t have to say manually copy crypttab to crypttab.old for a backup and instead always have a default config to fall back to if things go wrong by just commenting out your few changes in the drop-in file.
Thanks for your response!
I will give it a try. Have a great rest of your day!