Re: loop driver, device-mapper and crypto

[Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>]

Christophe Saout <christophe@saout.de> wrote:
>
> In 2.6 we have a device-mapper which does such things in a much more
> generic way. I've already talked to a bunch of people working on loop
> and cryptoloop (also with Clemens Fruhwirth, the cryptoloop maintainer)
> and they all agreed that device-mapper is probably the most correct way
> to go, and would be happier if the loop driver was used for files only.

I'm not a crypto-loop user, so I am not in a position to judge whether
using dm for crypto-on-disk is feature-sufficient and adequate from an
operational point of view.

It is good that Joe-and-co are OK with it and are prepared to help support
it.  If the people who _do_ use crypto-loop like the look of the feature
set and the user interface then fine.  Certainly the loop driver has a long
history of not working very well.

So.  If those-in-the-know like it then go wild.  It would be useful to get
an opinion from the distro guys too.

However I suspect that there will be a migration issue, and that we should
continue to work to get crypto-loop functioning well, plan to remove it
from 2.8, yes?