Comment 42 for bug 55159

  Hwere's what I've found so far looking at the askpass source code:

Askpass writes to stdout, asnd this is piped into cryptsetup in the scripts cryptroot and cryptdisks.functions

When the cryptroot script in the initramfs calls askpass, there is no underlying terminal to take the output from stdout, it goes straight to cryptsetup

When the cryptdisks.functions script calls askpass with the root partition mounted and a console underlying the splash screen, the pipe from askpass to cryptsetup is acting strangely.

 The variable "pass" which askpass wrote to stdout, and which the cryptdisks.functions script pipes into cryptsetup, is then going BOTH into cryptsetup and to the console! In other words, the data to stdout is getting sent to the console,yet still "caught" and sent to cryptsetup.

A pipe or | in a script is not supposed do this-I've not seen this on any other program. I wonder if this has to do with the console itself not being fully initialized in some way when running beneath usplash?

If so, the bug is in the console itself.

I tried to get askpass to return the passphrase as it's exit value, but this did not work. The code compiled fine, but when the script was rewritten to use the $? variable as the key it did not work, at least in my first attempt. I have only limited experience writing anything in C , most of my experience is in shell scripting.

Anyway, using the exit value tp move the passphrase would screw up the use of the exit value for debugging. Either the console needs to be fixed, a better way found to move the passphrase from askpass to cryptsetup, or askpass would need to be rewritten as anothe shell script that could import and export variables. This would possibly slow down boot times.

I've seen other bugs in consoles under usplash before-in particular, when running ubuntu hardy and doing my early experiments with encrypted /home, swap, and /tmp partitions I sometimes encountered corrupted keyboards on this console.

If the console is fixed right, this whole cryptsetup bug should go away without having to change anything in cryptsetup, the askpass binary included.

_________________________________________________________________
Express your personality in color! Preview and select themes for Hotmail®.
http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/LearnMore/personalize.aspx?ocid=PID23391::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HYGN_express:082009