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I'm trying to add dropbear to my initramfs so I can unlock the encrypted disk through a remote SSH session (as described here). I'm running Fedora 16 which apparently uses dracut to generate the initramfs image. Can anyone explain (or provide a link) how to add dropbear to initramfs using this setup?

Update:

I've been trying to learn more about dracut, but I'm finding that there's not a ton of information out there. Here is my current understanding, if anyone can comment on this:

  • I need to create a new dracut module which installs a pre-mount hook into the initramfs image.
  • The pre-mount hook will start the dropbear server, before any attempt is made to unlock/mount the LUKS filesystem (which presumably occurs during the "mount" phase).
  • With dropbear started, I should be able to SSH to the server and provide the passphrase to unlock it, as describe in the other post.
  • I also need to add a pre-pivot hook that will stop the dropbear server before the boot process chroots to the final root partition.
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  • If it's for the local network only, you could use telnet or netcat instead. I use netcat with a bit of random xor secret foo. Google finds several tutorials for dracut dropbear, did none of them work?
    – frostschutz
    Mar 6, 2013 at 23:58
  • No, actually I'm getting very few (relevant) results on Google. I've tried "dropbear dracut" and "dropbear dracut tutorial". There's a few hits that are actually relevant, but none of them have been useful,
    – brianmearns
    Mar 7, 2013 at 0:28

1 Answer 1

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I was able to cobble together my own dracut module that adds dropbear to the initramfs and starts it during init. It also replaces the cryptroot-ask script from the dracut-crypt module (which asks you for your LUKS password) with a custom one which sits around and waits for you to unlock the filesystem yourself (e.g., over SSH) (as well as a little extra hocus).

I've put it up on bitbucket if anyone wants to use or improve it. It currently doesn't shutdown the dropbear server after boot, so that's probably something that could be improved.

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  • Any chance of a tutorial?
    – a coder
    Jun 24, 2015 at 18:40
  • No, sorry. I did this a few years ago. It was my first and last time working with dracut or initramfs.
    – brianmearns
    Jun 24, 2015 at 19:02
  • Thanks, I am trying to find an alternate as I cannot get this or similar solutions to work (under virtualbox). Plan B is to find a iDrac module for the server and use that.
    – a coder
    Jun 24, 2015 at 19:30

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