Update cryfs package in artful
Sebastian Messmer
messmer at cryfs.org
Tue Mar 6 08:36:36 UTC 2018
Hi,
I'm the author of cryfs, a cryptographic file system. In the Ubuntu
repositories, there's currently cryfs 0.9.9 in bionic and cryfs 0.9.7 in
artful. I think it would make sense to also push 0.9.9 to artful.
Changes between the versions are minor.
Reasoning:
Cryfs 0.9.6 and 0.9.9+ produce compatible file systems, while opening a
file system with 0.9.7 or 0.9.8 will destroy compatibility with 0.9.6
(0.9.6 will refuse to open it afterwards). After that, compatibility
with 0.9.6 can be re-established by opening the file system with 0.9.9,
so it's reversible, but it still means you can't use these versions on
the same file system. Versions 0.9.6 and 0.9.9+ can be used on the same
file system without issues. I recommend not using 0.9.7 or 0.9.8 anymore.
Detailed technical description (feel free to skip):
The reason is that when 0.9.7 loads an older file system (say 0.9.6), it
asks users to "migrate" the file system to 0.9.7, even though there have
been no storage format changes between the versions. Then, the file
system will be marked as a "0.9.7" file system. Loading it in 0.9.6 will
fail in the future because of this marking, even though it's still the
same storage format. Some users have an old 0.9.6 Debian version and
asked for compatibility. For this reason, version 0.9.9 re-established
this compatibility by marking its file systems as "0.9.6". This means
that cryfs versions 0.9.6 and 0.9.9 can be used alongside each other and
run on the same file system. Also any future file systems, until there
is a breaking change in the storage format. However, once opened with
0.9.7 or 0.9.8, the file system marking will change and 0.9.6 will
refuse to open it until it was opened with 0.9.9, which sets the marking
back to 0.9.6.
Regards
Sebastian Messmer
More information about the Ubuntu-motu
mailing list