Anybody had experience with one of these and Linux? ... Puppy or otherwise?
Kingston's web page says:
DataTraveler Elite USB 2.0 Flash Drive with Software Security + 128-bit Data Encryption
But I can't find support for anything other than Windows ... and specifically XP at that.
What it does. Kingston has a couple flavors of USB stick that store the data on the stick in encrypted form. One flavor actually has the encryption engine on the USB stick; this particular model kinda implies that the encryption is done in the computer. But Kingston's web page and the on-board doc doesn't help much and a web search turns up a dozen places to buy one but no clues on how it works.
Fedora. When I insert the USB stick, the proper modules come up and the dirctory shows a 'Kingston DTC Privacy' device. But with Fedora it's not mounted (mount shows no /dev/sda or /dev/sr devices) and /media is empty. Attempting to open the directory yields an 'unable to mount' error. The permissions window shows 444 (universal read capability) and you're prohibited from changing anything. fdisk returns an 'unable to open' answer and punts.
Puppy has different, and tad more successful, behavior. (v.1.09 with MUT 0.0.7b). It does show the drive (sr0) and MUT properly mounts it. mount shows the USB stick mounted at /mnt/sr0 and typed as ISO9660 (looks like a CD) and tagged as read only.
There are half dozen files (read only) that ROX dutifully shows. One's a .pdf user guide (all Windows-specific) and most of the rest are .exe driver and config files.
Desiderata.
1) the drive is rather useless unless I can write to it.
2) of course, the true Puppy usefulness comes with being able to boot the canine right from the USB stick.
Anybody cracked this one?
Kingston KUSBDTE sticks
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BlackAdder
- Posts: 385
- Joined: Sun 22 May 2005, 23:29
I don't have one of these Kingston drives, but it looks as though it is similar to a U3 drive I have. That one has two partitions, the first is a "fake" CD that automounts under Windows and shows up as sr0 under Puppy, and the second "data" partition which shows as sda . Is there no sda, sdb etc. showing with yout drive? The Kingston web site says the DTE drives are supported by Linux kernels >= 2.4.
Kingston KUSBDTE sticks
nope, no sda or sdb at all.... neither MUT nor fdisk will dredge one of those up. only /dev/sr0 for what is apparently the public partition.
Rex Buddenberg
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BlackAdder
- Posts: 385
- Joined: Sun 22 May 2005, 23:29
Is the usb-storage module loaded? It is possible that our little Puppy is confused because the first partition is a fake CD-ROM.
If not, try:
Then you could try MUT.
If not, try:
Code: Select all
modprobe usb-storageKingston KUSBDTE
Good suggestion, but didn't help ... past that. lsmod shows usb-storage there all right.
More sit/stay commands revealed this:
- MUT will dutifully mount /dev/sr0. It's read-only and shows a file type that looks like CD-rom (same as above, no new information).
- but if you go up the directory, lo-behold, there's something at /mnt/sda1 [!]
o I can write to this directory. I slid a couple graphics files from /home over there and they wrote. And survived a reboot/swap USB stick. Like you'd expect with any other USB memory stick.
o mount shows /dev/sr0 mounted but makes no mention of /mnt/sda1 whatever.
o no queries for passphrase or such. It appears that the data is either en claire or Puppy -- anybody's puppy -- already knows the password. Which rather defeats the purpose of the DTE....
that's worth one dog biscuit. (This much on an ancient IBM Thinkpad 240 sans CD drive but with USB port)
Ok, try learning to roll over. Booted Puppy2.02 on a machine with a CD. The above behavior is consistent. (and usb-storage did load up correctly).
- universal installer fails to find the USB stick at all.
- none of the partition editing tools work; qtparted can't see any USB stick at all; fdisk finds sr0 and barks loudly about read-only (and tells you little information). fdisk won't find any /dev/sda1 at all.
no second dog biscuit.
More sit/stay commands revealed this:
- MUT will dutifully mount /dev/sr0. It's read-only and shows a file type that looks like CD-rom (same as above, no new information).
- but if you go up the directory, lo-behold, there's something at /mnt/sda1 [!]
o I can write to this directory. I slid a couple graphics files from /home over there and they wrote. And survived a reboot/swap USB stick. Like you'd expect with any other USB memory stick.
o mount shows /dev/sr0 mounted but makes no mention of /mnt/sda1 whatever.
o no queries for passphrase or such. It appears that the data is either en claire or Puppy -- anybody's puppy -- already knows the password. Which rather defeats the purpose of the DTE....
that's worth one dog biscuit. (This much on an ancient IBM Thinkpad 240 sans CD drive but with USB port)
Ok, try learning to roll over. Booted Puppy2.02 on a machine with a CD. The above behavior is consistent. (and usb-storage did load up correctly).
- universal installer fails to find the USB stick at all.
- none of the partition editing tools work; qtparted can't see any USB stick at all; fdisk finds sr0 and barks loudly about read-only (and tells you little information). fdisk won't find any /dev/sda1 at all.
no second dog biscuit.
Rex Buddenberg
FWIW this is what Kingston has to say about the Data Traveler Elite in Linux:
Yes, the Data Traveler Elite is supported by Linux as long as you have Linux Kernel 2.4x and above. However, the security features that ship with this unit are not compatible with Linux.