From: "Deranged Mutant" <WlkngOwl@unix.asb.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 09:47:53 +0800
To: Ray Arachelian <sunder@dorsai.dorsai.org>
Subject: Re: What remains to be done.
Message-ID: <199607082124.RAA09624@unix.asb.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On  8 Jul 96 at 14:12, Ray Arachelian wrote:
[..]
> I'm constantly switching between NT and 95 and have them installed on the 
> same drive.  Would be cool to have some low level driver to encryption 
> from the Master Boot Record for example to get around unfriendly OS's- but 
> then NT won't respect the BIOS calls, 95 in 32 bit mode won't, Linux sure 
> as hell wont, etc.... that was the whole idea of having a BIOS in the 
> first place, but woe is us.

BIOS was written for real mode... part of the problem. Another is the 
not-made-here syndrome, and in a sense Linux, OS/2, NT and 95 are 
different types of operating systems, so a shared BIOS is unfeasible.

It would be nice to develop an encrypted filesystem that could be 
ported across operating systems for those of us with multiple OS's.

BTW, Linux 2.0 is making a nice step in that direction by adding 
support for mounting a file (which contains a filesystem), 
specifically to allow encrypted file systems as well as things like 
testing out iso9660-fs before buring CD-ROMs, etc.  In theory 
something similar can be done with Win95/NT and OS/2, but it hasn't 
been done the proper way (SecureDevice is really a hack in that 
sense). 

---
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        AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl@unix.asb.com>
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