Useful System Administration tips for Ubuntu

Use dropbear to remotely unlock a fully encrypted disk

If you've enabled full disk encryption, you will need to enter a password to unlock the disk at reboot time.  If you want to be able to unlock the disk remotely via ssh, here are the steps

  1. http://blog.netpacket.co.uk/2016/12/05/unlocking-ubuntu-server-16-encrypted-luks-using-dropbear-ssh/
  2. My ~/.ssh/config has an entry for "unlock".  So after I boot my Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop VM (using the VirtualBox CLI), then I just type 'ssh unlock', and type 'unlock' when presented with the prompt in busybox.  You will be prompted to enter a password to unlock the encrypted disk.  After that, the system will boot up, then you can ssh in remotely.
    Host unlock
      Hostname 192.168.56.101
      User root
      IdentityFile /Users/ksa/.ssh/id_rsa_ubuntu_unlock
      StrictHostKeyChecking no

 

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