xref: /linux/Documentation/admin-guide/device-mapper/dm-crypt.rst (revision 4b132aacb0768ac1e652cf517097ea6f237214b9)
1========
2dm-crypt
3========
4
5Device-Mapper's "crypt" target provides transparent encryption of block devices
6using the kernel crypto API.
7
8For a more detailed description of supported parameters see:
9https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup/wikis/DMCrypt
10
11Parameters::
12
13	      <cipher> <key> <iv_offset> <device path> \
14	      <offset> [<#opt_params> <opt_params>]
15
16<cipher>
17    Encryption cipher, encryption mode and Initial Vector (IV) generator.
18
19    The cipher specifications format is::
20
21       cipher[:keycount]-chainmode-ivmode[:ivopts]
22
23    Examples::
24
25       aes-cbc-essiv:sha256
26       aes-xts-plain64
27       serpent-xts-plain64
28
29    Cipher format also supports direct specification with kernel crypt API
30    format (selected by capi: prefix). The IV specification is the same
31    as for the first format type.
32    This format is mainly used for specification of authenticated modes.
33
34    The crypto API cipher specifications format is::
35
36        capi:cipher_api_spec-ivmode[:ivopts]
37
38    Examples::
39
40        capi:cbc(aes)-essiv:sha256
41        capi:xts(aes)-plain64
42
43    Examples of authenticated modes::
44
45        capi:gcm(aes)-random
46        capi:authenc(hmac(sha256),xts(aes))-random
47        capi:rfc7539(chacha20,poly1305)-random
48
49    The /proc/crypto contains a list of currently loaded crypto modes.
50
51<key>
52    Key used for encryption. It is encoded either as a hexadecimal number
53    or it can be passed as <key_string> prefixed with single colon
54    character (':') for keys residing in kernel keyring service.
55    You can only use key sizes that are valid for the selected cipher
56    in combination with the selected iv mode.
57    Note that for some iv modes the key string can contain additional
58    keys (for example IV seed) so the key contains more parts concatenated
59    into a single string.
60
61<key_string>
62    The kernel keyring key is identified by string in following format:
63    <key_size>:<key_type>:<key_description>.
64
65<key_size>
66    The encryption key size in bytes. The kernel key payload size must match
67    the value passed in <key_size>.
68
69<key_type>
70    Either 'logon', 'user', 'encrypted' or 'trusted' kernel key type.
71
72<key_description>
73    The kernel keyring key description crypt target should look for
74    when loading key of <key_type>.
75
76<keycount>
77    Multi-key compatibility mode. You can define <keycount> keys and
78    then sectors are encrypted according to their offsets (sector 0 uses key0;
79    sector 1 uses key1 etc.).  <keycount> must be a power of two.
80
81<iv_offset>
82    The IV offset is a sector count that is added to the sector number
83    before creating the IV.
84
85<device path>
86    This is the device that is going to be used as backend and contains the
87    encrypted data.  You can specify it as a path like /dev/xxx or a device
88    number <major>:<minor>.
89
90<offset>
91    Starting sector within the device where the encrypted data begins.
92
93<#opt_params>
94    Number of optional parameters. If there are no optional parameters,
95    the optional parameters section can be skipped or #opt_params can be zero.
96    Otherwise #opt_params is the number of following arguments.
97
98    Example of optional parameters section:
99        3 allow_discards same_cpu_crypt submit_from_crypt_cpus
100
101allow_discards
102    Block discard requests (a.k.a. TRIM) are passed through the crypt device.
103    The default is to ignore discard requests.
104
105    WARNING: Assess the specific security risks carefully before enabling this
106    option.  For example, allowing discards on encrypted devices may lead to
107    the leak of information about the ciphertext device (filesystem type,
108    used space etc.) if the discarded blocks can be located easily on the
109    device later.
110
111same_cpu_crypt
112    Perform encryption using the same cpu that IO was submitted on.
113    The default is to use an unbound workqueue so that encryption work
114    is automatically balanced between available CPUs.
115
116high_priority
117    Set dm-crypt workqueues and the writer thread to high priority. This
118    improves throughput and latency of dm-crypt while degrading general
119    responsiveness of the system.
120
121submit_from_crypt_cpus
122    Disable offloading writes to a separate thread after encryption.
123    There are some situations where offloading write bios from the
124    encryption threads to a single thread degrades performance
125    significantly.  The default is to offload write bios to the same
126    thread because it benefits CFQ to have writes submitted using the
127    same context.
128
129no_read_workqueue
130    Bypass dm-crypt internal workqueue and process read requests synchronously.
131
132no_write_workqueue
133    Bypass dm-crypt internal workqueue and process write requests synchronously.
134    This option is automatically enabled for host-managed zoned block devices
135    (e.g. host-managed SMR hard-disks).
136
137integrity:<bytes>:<type>
138    The device requires additional <bytes> metadata per-sector stored
139    in per-bio integrity structure. This metadata must by provided
140    by underlying dm-integrity target.
141
142    The <type> can be "none" if metadata is used only for persistent IV.
143
144    For Authenticated Encryption with Additional Data (AEAD)
145    the <type> is "aead". An AEAD mode additionally calculates and verifies
146    integrity for the encrypted device. The additional space is then
147    used for storing authentication tag (and persistent IV if needed).
148
149sector_size:<bytes>
150    Use <bytes> as the encryption unit instead of 512 bytes sectors.
151    This option can be in range 512 - 4096 bytes and must be power of two.
152    Virtual device will announce this size as a minimal IO and logical sector.
153
154iv_large_sectors
155   IV generators will use sector number counted in <sector_size> units
156   instead of default 512 bytes sectors.
157
158   For example, if <sector_size> is 4096 bytes, plain64 IV for the second
159   sector will be 8 (without flag) and 1 if iv_large_sectors is present.
160   The <iv_offset> must be multiple of <sector_size> (in 512 bytes units)
161   if this flag is specified.
162
163
164Module parameters::
165
166   max_read_size
167   max_write_size
168      Maximum size of read or write requests. When a request larger than this size
169      is received, dm-crypt will split the request. The splitting improves
170      concurrency (the split requests could be encrypted in parallel by multiple
171      cores), but it also causes overhead. The user should tune these parameters to
172      fit the actual workload.
173
174
175Example scripts
176===============
177LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) is now the preferred way to set up disk
178encryption with dm-crypt using the 'cryptsetup' utility, see
179https://gitlab.com/cryptsetup/cryptsetup
180
181::
182
183	#!/bin/sh
184	# Create a crypt device using dmsetup
185	dmsetup create crypt1 --table "0 `blockdev --getsz $1` crypt aes-cbc-essiv:sha256 babebabebabebabebabebabebabebabe 0 $1 0"
186
187::
188
189	#!/bin/sh
190	# Create a crypt device using dmsetup when encryption key is stored in keyring service
191	dmsetup create crypt2 --table "0 `blockdev --getsize $1` crypt aes-cbc-essiv:sha256 :32:logon:my_prefix:my_key 0 $1 0"
192
193::
194
195	#!/bin/sh
196	# Create a crypt device using cryptsetup and LUKS header with default cipher
197	cryptsetup luksFormat $1
198	cryptsetup luksOpen $1 crypt1
199