[vox-tech] mutt, email, usb mini storage, dvorak...

[David Margolis]

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003, Jonathan McPherson wrote:

> 2. I am considering buying one of those USB keyring mini storage devices
>    (they're getting cheap; 128MB devices run $30 or so) and storing my
>    GPG private key on it.  This would let me both sign emails from any
>    computer and keep the key off my potentially vulnerable networked PC.
>    Do you think that this is a good idea?  The main drawbacks I can see
>    is that if I lose the device, I would have to get a new key pair, and
>    the fact that my key will be in the RAM of the machine I am using.
>    How good is Linux support for these devices?  Is there a brand you
>    would recommend?

I can't answer your other questions, but I can answer about USB keyrings.
I can't say this for every single one of them, but of the two that I've
tried, support has been just fine.

I don't own one, but I've played 'em at work...

I had to do:
/sbin/modprobe usb-storage (assuming usb-uhci already loaded)
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb (or whatever mount point)

The filesystem was something regular, I think vfat.  The process behaved
almost exactly the same as my compact flash card which goes in a compact
flash/pcmcia adapter (the cf card shows up as /dev/hde1).

I'm guessing on /dev/sda1, but I think that's what it is.  I know the
device shows up as a scsi drive in dmesg though so check there to be sure.
There are probably some clever things you can do with hotplug but I know
nothing about that...

A lot of them claim linux support:
http://www.diskonkey.com/
http://www.usbkeydrive.com/Mini_USBKey.htm
There was another one I used to get spammed by all the time that was
pretty cool looking...it was orange and black.

This is the one I got working:
http://www.lexarmedia.com/jumpdrive/

I just read a _no problem_ report on the iomega model.

Go for it.  I imagine it will feel pretty cool whipping it out and
sticking it in (what? that sounds terrible).