[Discuss] systemd plans to solve a problem I didn't know I had....

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Rich Pieri)]

On Sat, 6 Jun 2020 01:52:24 -0400
Bill Bogstad <bogstad at pobox.com> wrote:

> Yeah, I was reading the article and going "well this seems like a
> gratuitous change that I'll have to deal with"
> and then I had the WTF moment.

It's also going to interfere with Kerberos (or vice-versa).

Oh, and never mind that loopback devices are a limited resource: 8 by
default. This means on a stock system you can have 8 simultaneous users
with "portable" home directories. Or whatever you set the max_loop
kernel boot parameter but still finite. Assuming you're not using loop
devices for other purposes like mounting image files.

The concept is kind of neat: containerizing home directories. In
practice there are a lot of technical and usability problems with it
(see Apple's FileVault v1 for example) that if Apple's developers
couldn't solve them then I don't see Poettering and Red Hat pulling
that off.

BTW: Apple's solution to FileVault's problems was replacing home
directory encryption with full disk encryption.

-- 
Rich Pieri