Stratis 2.1.0 Release Notes

mulhern, Stratis Team

Stratis 2.1.0 introduces support for encryption.

It supports per-pool encryption of the devices that form a pool's data tier. A pool may be encrypted, or its constituent encrypted devices may be activated, by means of a key stored in the kernel keyring.

stratisd 2.1.0

This release implements encryption support and adds several new D-Bus interfaces to administer or monitor that support.

It implements encryption support in the following way:

• A single instance of stratisd can support both encrypted and unencrypted pools.
• The choice to encrypt a pool must be made at the time a pool is created.
• At present, the use of a cache and of encryption are mutually exclusive; if the pool is created with encryption enabled, then it is not possible to create a cache.
• Each pool may be encrypted by means of a key in the kernel keyring; each encrypted pool may make use of a different key, but all devices in a pool are encrypted with a single key.
• Any additional devices that are added to an encrypted pool's data tier will be encrypted using the key that was specified when the pool was initialized.

stratisd 2.1.0 supplies several new D-Bus interfaces:

• org.storage.stratis2.manager.r1: This interface supplies an extended CreatePool method, to support an optional argument for encryption. In addition, it supplies a number of method for key management.
• org.storage.stratis2.pool.r1: This interface supports explicit initialization of a cache tier. Previously, a cache was initialized as a side-effect of the addition of the first device to the cache tier. It also supports the new Encrypted property.
• org.storage.stratis2.FetchProperties.r1: This interface supports an additional HasCache property.
• org.storage.stratis2.Report.r1: This interface supports a set of ad-hoc reports about Stratis. The interface is unstable; the names by which the reports can be accesed are not guaranteed to remain stable, and the format of any report is only guaranteed to be valid JSON.

Please consult the D-Bus API Reference for the precise D-Bus specification.

The following are significant implementation details:

• Each block device in an encrypted pool's data tier is encrypted with a distinct, randomly chosen MEK (Media Encryption Key) on initialization.
• All devices belonging to a single encrypted pool share a single passphrase, supplied via the kernel keyring.
• The release requires cryptsetup version 2.3.

We would like to thank our external contributor GuillaumeGomez for further work on metadata refactoring (stratisd issue 1573).

stratis-cli 2.1.0

This release requires stratisd 2.1.0. The user will observe the following changes:

• The pool create command has been extended to allow encryption.
• There is a new pool init_cache command, for initializing a cache.
• There is a new subcommand, key, for key management tasks.
• There is a new subcommand, report, which allows the display of certain reports generated by stratisd.
• The output of pool list now includes a Properties column; each entry in the column is a string encoding the following properties of the pool:
  • whether or not it has a cache
  • whether or not it is encrypted

All commands now verify that stratis is communicating with a compatible version of stratisd and will fail with an appropriate error if stratisd is found to have an incompatible version.

Usage

To create an encrypted pool, a user must first ensure that a key is placed in the kernel keyring. We strongly encourage using the commands available via the stratis key subcommand for this task. This key, which is secret, has a corresponding key description, which is public.

An encrypted pool is then created by specifying the key description when using the pool create command.

It is necessary that the correct key and corresponding key description be set in the kernel keyring in order to set up a previously encrypted pool. Setting up a previously encrypted pool requires an explicit pool unlock command from the user. This command will attempt to unlock the devices belonging to any previously encrypted pool; it can only unlock all devices if a key for every encrypted pool is in the keyring. Once the devices belonging to a previously encrypted pool have been unlocked, the pool will be set up, and can be used in exactly the same manner as an unencrypted pool.

Please consult the changelogs for additional information about the release.