2009-03-17 22:33:36

by markus reichelt

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: New kernel hifn795x driver does not play nice with luks

> I have encountered a problem with the new HiFn driver in 2.6.27,
> cryptsetup and luks.

the mailinglist you posted to mainly deals with loop-aes these days,
the dm-crypt/luks/mainline loop-crypto guys for some obscure reason
opted to start a mailinglist of the same name at
[email protected], so you are better off asking there
(blame them for confusing people).

CC added, though I guess you need to subscribe to their holy shrine,
anyway. And keep in mind that dm-crypt/yada is still beta-code, it's
nowhere near stable.

HTH


> I am able to unlock my luks devices fine, but attempting to mount
> the device will result in mount hanging forever (ps shows it as D+,
> presumably it's waiting for I/O from the card), forcing me to
> manually kill the process. If i then try to close the luks
> partition luksClose informs me that the drive is in use. The
> hifn_795x module will be locked as well in the process.
>
> However, as soon as I disable/remove the hifn_795x module prior to
> mounting the device, everything works as it should yet again.
>
> It seems the HiFn card has taken over as the preferred module to
> use for AES, according to /proc/crypto:
>
> ------------------------------
> name : cbc(aes)
> driver : cbc-aes-hifn0
> module : hifn_795x
> priority : 300
> (...)
> ------------------------------
> name : aes
> driver : aes-asm
> module : kernel
> priority : 200
> (...)
> ------------------------------
> name : aes
> driver : aes-generic
> module : kernel
> priority : 100
> (...)
> ------------------------------
>
> I have no idea what the problem might be, but I suppose the HiFn
> card might not like my luks partitions (aes, cbc-essiv), or some
> other incompatibility or other issues somewhere.
>
> Have anyone else experienced this behavior? Any possible solutions?
>
> Prior to the 2.6.27 kernel I was running OCF to handle my card, and
> everything was working splendid, however the performance of the
> HiFn RNG is many times higher with the built-in driver (from
> ~300kb/s to ~2.5MB/s), and since my main beef with this card is the
> RNG I would very much like to stay with the driver from 2.6.27.
>
> Is there any way to change the priority on these cipher modules so
> the kernel ones would be used in preference of the hifn_795x ones?
> I am perfectly happy doing luks and general AES in software, if
> only there was a way for me to set their priority by hand.
>
>
>
> Best Regards,
> Frode Moseng Monsson

--
left blank, right bald
loop-AES FAQ: http://mareichelt.de/pub/texts.loop-aes.php#faq


2009-03-17 22:47:25

by Evgeniy Polyakov

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: New kernel hifn795x driver does not play nice with luks

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 11:33:32PM +0100, markus reichelt ([email protected]) wrote:
> > I have encountered a problem with the new HiFn driver in 2.6.27,
> > cryptsetup and luks.
>
> the mailinglist you posted to mainly deals with loop-aes these days,
> the dm-crypt/luks/mainline loop-crypto guys for some obscure reason
> opted to start a mailinglist of the same name at
> [email protected], so you are better off asking there
> (blame them for confusing people).
>
> CC added, though I guess you need to subscribe to their holy shrine,
> anyway. And keep in mind that dm-crypt/yada is still beta-code, it's
> nowhere near stable.

What was that?
Also, [email protected] email was not in the proper header, so it does not
appear in copy list.

> > I am able to unlock my luks devices fine, but attempting to mount
> > the device will result in mount hanging forever (ps shows it as D+,
> > presumably it's waiting for I/O from the card), forcing me to
> > manually kill the process. If i then try to close the luks
> > partition luksClose informs me that the drive is in use. The
> > hifn_795x module will be locked as well in the process.
> >
> > However, as soon as I disable/remove the hifn_795x module prior to
> > mounting the device, everything works as it should yet again.

Please send a dmesg output when card is blocked.
Thank you.

--
Evgeniy Polyakov