Re: Booting a CD / Special password protection

[Jochen Hoenicke]

On Oct 16, Volker Augustin wrote:
> Hello, I have 2 questions:

> 1. Is there a way to use GRUB to boot a bootable CD?

Not at the moment.  I think most BIOSes that can boot CD-ROM don't
provide an interface to this functionality.  This means that a boot
loader has to provide it's own ATAPI driver and floppy remapping,
which is very difficult.

> 2. Is it possible to specify in the menu.lst a password for each
> menu entry that is asked for AFTER the entry is selected?

It is quite easy to add this.  I can do this, when I do the encrypted
passwords.

> [...]optionally the password should not be stored in the clear but only
> the hash of the password.  

I plan to do this.  Yesterday, I have done a space efficient
implementation of md5_crypt. I also have implemented DES crypt, but
I'm not sure if it makes sense to add this, too.  MD5 crypt is
smaller, superior and MD5 may be useful for other purposes as well.

I just need some time to integrate it smoothly and in backwards
compatible way in grub.  I think of adding a --crypt option like

password --crypt $1$saltstri$YMyguxXMBpd2TEZ.vS/3q1

One problem may be the export restrictions for cryptography.  Does anyone
know if password hashes are also restricted?

  Jochen