Issue with volume encryption

sangeth

Hi Guys,



Currently trying out Knox and have some questions regarding volume encryption. I have an internal drive 2Tb drive with volume encryption. When my machine boots Knox automatically detects that the drive is an encrypted volume and automatically prompts for the password to open it post-login. I'm finding that if, after it's been opened, I close it either by ejecting the volume in Finder or via the application interface, Knox closes the vault and un-mounts the volume. This means that if I wish to open the vault again I have to go to Disk Utility and manually mount the drive as Knox no longer knows anything about the drive/vault.



This seems somewhat suboptimal as the user is required to manage the drive outside of Knox. Is there a way that if the drive is closed via the Knox interface that it would close the encrypted volume but still keep it available in the list of vaults via the menu bar or dock?

thightower

It should keep a list of vault's in the menubar, click on the icon and they should appear. I have included a screen shot of my LicenseKey Vault. If I click on it I am prompted for my password to open it and later if I click on it it closes and unmount's the volume a check mark beside it indicates its mounted. Which mine is not currently mounted.

thightower

I just checked and the vault shows up both locations in dock and menu bar.



I dont use the boot as a mount so to get it into the icons etc you may need to mount it one time out side of a boot so that knox has a chance to save the vault etc in its list.. This is purely a guess on this portion.

sangeth

Is the "LicenseKeys" vault in your example an encrypted volume or a vault that's stored in "~/Documents/Knox/"? I.e., when you created the "LicenseKeys" vault did you select "Create an encrypted vault file" or "Reformat a volume as an encrypted vault"? The second option is what I did.



When I initially boot and login the encrypted volume shows up fine in both the menu bar and dock menus. It's when I close the vault and subsequently try to open it again that it disappears from the menus.



If you feel we're going in circles here I'm happy to provide a set of steps to replicate what I'm experiencing.

thightower

Nope its a vault stored in Dropbox.

I used create a vault.



I see what your saying now I must have missed that during my original reading of your post. Sorry,



I am only guessing here maybe a set of bad preferences for Knox, I have never had this problem. I would off hand suspect this. But most of the technical types will be in tomorrow and maybe they will have a better idea.

sangeth

Not a problem Tommy. I appreciate you looking through the issue.

jxpx777

Sangeth, thanks for the feedback. I just used the "Reformat…" option to secure a flash drive today for the first time and I see what you're talking about. It's a tricky problem because the disk has to be ejected for the disk to be safely removed. I was looking at my system profile under Snow Leopard and when I have my flash drive plugged in but ejected (Plugged it in and then ejected it but left it in place.) the information about the device is still there including the serial number and location id. So, I'm thinking that it's possible to realize that a device is still connected to the Mac and thus make the vault available in the list. This is a guess at this point and I haven't dug into the code to see how reasonable this is, but I will open a ticket for us to investigate this further when we have some time to clear the decks.