[TriLUG] USB keychains and private keys

Tanner Lovelace lovelace at wayfarer.org
Thu Jul 15 13:45:48 EDT 2004


Joseph Mack NA3T said the following on 7/15/04 6:57 AM:

> I was thinking of getting a USB keychain flashcard to store (among other
> things) my private key(s). However ssh requires that your private key be
> 400. I assume the USB keychains are vfat, in which case you can only set
> the permissions to 444, and ssh won't accep the private key (tested on a
> vfat floppy).
> 
> Presumably I could put an ext3 file system on there, but then I won't be
> able to use the device to transfer files to a windows machine (which
> admittedly I don't do a whole lot, but would be useful to be able to do).
> 
> I understand that you're not supposed to reformat these devices a whole
> lot, and that you should use cramfs if you're going to reformat them.
> 
> Do people store their private keys on these USB keychains?
> 
> Can someone straighten me out?

Since vfat doesn't have any concept of file permissions, you can
specify at mount time what permissions the files should have.  It defaults
to 777 (I think, or it might be 755), but that can be changed on
the mount command line or in /etc/fstab.  The man pages should
tell you what else you need to know.

Cheers,
Tanner



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