[PLUG] more thoughts on usb flash drives

[sean finney <seanius@seanius.net>]

hey guys,

more on the topic of flash drives... i'm trying to think of the
best uses for this thing.  here's a list of things that i'd like this
to do:

- persistent /home dir (with gpg keys, ssh keys, rc files, et c.)
- frequently used programs for various os's (putty/pscp for windows, for
  example), maybe other random files i want to have available
- a minimal bootstrapped linux install

now, i'd like to have the important stuff somehow cryptographically
protected.  does anyone have experience with encrypted home dirs?

i've done some reading on cfs, which seems a bit of a heavyweight
for what i want (requiring a cfs server/client on each machine), though
cfs does seem somewhat portable to other unix-like systems.  

there's also storing the filesystem as an encrypted image file, but that
might require a crypto-enabled kernel (depending on how it was encrypted),
and i don't know what kind of support loop-device mounting would get on
other unix-like os's (i don't care about windows, but it'd be nice to
be able to get to it on *BSD's for example).

can anyone else think of other options for that?

as for the misc files i'd like to get to, i'm assuming that'd be a fat32
partition, because i'd like to be able to get to that from within windows * 
and os x.  

and then i figure take the rest of the space and make it an ext2
partition and bootstrap everything i can into it.  i'd probably still
need a boot disk for most bioses (or access to the bootloader cmdline),
but it'd be nice to have a mini distro in there for most of my
rescue/hacking needs.

thoughts and ideas welcome...


thanks,
	sean

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