Automount LUKS encrypted NTFS USB disk in RHEL 5.3

[SandySmall]

Hi
I have an external 300GB (Toshiba) disk which I encrypted (using cryptsetup luksFormat) and then installed an NTFS filesystem on (need to be able to use it in both Linux and Windows - using FreeOTFE). The disk mounts fine in windows and on my Fedora 10 system it automounts.
I can manually mount it on the RHEL5.3 system, and gnome-mount gets as far as recognising that it is encrypted and asking for the key, but it doesn't then mount it - I then have to manually mount the /dev/mapper/luks... device.
Does anyone know how to do this - if it works in Fedora 10 it ought to be possible to get it to work in EL5.3 I'd have thought.

Thanks for your help.

[Rubberman]

EL5.x is quite a bit back-dated from FC10 and 11. Just be glad you can manually mount it. I don't know if there are some configuration settings that would let it be automounted by gnome like you wish.

[jnike]

Hi SandySmall,

You may have to save a copy of your /etc/fstab file than manually edit the fstab fille to include your external 300GB (Toshiba) disk. This is just a suggestion.

I hope this is of help.


Jnike

[Rubberman]

Hi SandySmall,

You may have to save a copy of your /etc/fstab file than manually edit the fstab fille to include your external 300GB (Toshiba) disk. This is just a suggestion.

I hope this is of help.


Jnike

Not a bad suggestion. However, I don't recommend that for external USB drives since if you unmount and disconnect it, and it is still disconnected when you reboot the system, then the operating system can fail to start up because the device for the entry in fstab is missing. I add my external esata drives to fstab, but not my usb ones. If the automounter won't work for some reason, then I resort to the manual mount method.

[jnike]

Hi Rubberman,

Point taken, this was just a suggestion, based on the external disk being permanent part of the system architecture.

Jnike