Re: [Tails-dev] [GSoC] [tails-server] Ideas and challenges a…

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Author: jvoisin
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] [GSoC] [tails-server] Ideas and challenges about asking the user's passphrase on boot
Hello,
Since anonym answered a large part of tails-server's
passphrase-input-related interrogation,
I'll go with some of the remaining ones:

Dealing with multiples tails-server on the same LAN:
This is not a problem, since the hostname is set during
the setup; it's up to the user to take care to not name multiples
servers with the same name.

What if the screen is broken but the keyboard is still available ?
We must find a way to tell to the user when he should
enter his passphrase, and the result of the operation
(good/bad passphrase).
A good solution could be to communicate thought the
keyboard's capslock LED.
For example:
    - Continuous blink : please enter your passphrase
    - Two quick-blink : good passphrase
    - No more blink until the user can input his passphrase
        again, in case of bad passphrase.
Since not every keyboards have a capslock LED,
we could use the system speaker instead;
but since this involve waking up the whole house
when the server is booted up, I prefer the LED solution.


As previously said, in order to authenticate the server,
the user must carry a private key (dropbear approach),
or a certificate fingerprint (webpage approach).
But the server must also have an unencrypted partition,
to carry public keys (dropbear), and certs (webpage).
Since the dropbear approach will require user authentication,
in order to provide a password-less shell access, the webpage one
does not : tails-server does not care about who you are,
the only thing that matter is that you have the right passphrase.