Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2012 10:52:24 -0500 From: Nathan Wehr <gtolemans@gmail.com> To: freebsd-geom@freebsd.org Subject: Lost geli metadata Message-ID: <CC52B291-1029-4152-96F1-0401A02DF3B2@gmail.com>
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I have FreeBSD 8.0 installed on a machine with geli encrypting one of = the hard drives. Most of what's on the drive I can live without, but = there are a few important items that, unfortunately, don't exist = elsewhere. When I try to attach the drive, I get the following message: [root@baxter ~/]# geli attach -k /root/ad4.key /dev/ad4 [root@baxter ~/]# Enter Passphrase: (I enter passphrase no problem, geli = seems to attach) [root@baxter ~/]# mount /dev/ad4.eli /private mount: /dev/ad4.eli : No such file or directory <-- This is the problem The rest of this sad story is really just a long list of me making = stupid mistakes. Here's a bit of history that might be helpful: Mistake #1: Store non-backedup data on a backup drive that's encrypted.=20= If I hadn't of made Mistake #1, losing all of my data would be far less = heart-wrenching. However - and unfortunately - my mistakes do not end = there. To start out with, I took out the CD/DVD drive from the machine = to install it in a different one. After I did that, the drive label for = the encrypted drive changed from ad4 to ad2. And of course geli wouldn't = attach the drive and so I tried to use glabel. Needless to say, glabel = didn't work. After that, I backed up the meta data (more like overwrote = meta data that was already backed up when I originally encrypted the = drive) that geli puts on the drive and then try to restore it after I = insert the CD/DVD drive.=20 This didn't work, and with a little bit of research, I found out that = both geli and glabel both write data to the same place on the hard drive = (the last sector). Which means that the backed up meta data which is at = /var/backups/ad4.eli now contains data for glabel instead of geli. I = read somewhere that the meta data for geli contains key information = which doesn't make sense to me because I have the key stored at = /root/ad4.key. So, my question... Is there any hope at recovering the = information on the drive? If so, how? And, if not, why? I would appreciate any help that you could offer, especially regarding = the failed mount command listed above.
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