GSHSEC(8)

🎀 GSHSEC(8) — the gshsec situation 🎀

ok so bestie, welcome to the gshsec page (that's section 8 of the System Manager's Manual, mwah) 💅

✨ NAME ✨

gshsec — the control utility for shared secret devices. yep, that's the whole vibe.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

gshsec label [-hv] name prov prov ...
gshsec stop [-fv] name ...
gshsec clear [-v] prov ...
gshsec dump prov ...
gshsec list
gshsec status
gshsec load
gshsec unload

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So gshsec sets up a device that holds a shared secret, and the way that works is that the secret is shared between the given providers. To actually collect the secret, you need all of the providers. Every single one. If one component is missing, there is literally no way to get any useful data out of the rest of them — not a crumb, not a byte 😭 that's the whole point of it.

The first argument you hand to gshsec is the action you want performed:

• label — set up a shared secret device from the given components, with the name you specify. Metadata lives in the last sector of every component. 🫶
• stop — turn off an existing shared secret device by its name. heads up: this command does not touch on-disk metadata!
• clear — clear the metadata on the given providers.
• dump — dump the metadata stored on the given providers.
• list — see geom(8).
• status — see geom(8).
• load — see geom(8).
• unload — see geom(8).

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🌈 additional options 🌈

• -f — force the removal of the specified shared secret device.
• -h — hardcode the providers' names in the metadata.
• -v — be more verbose (she's chatty, she tells you things 💬).

⭐ EXIT STATUS ⭐

Exit status is 0 on success, and 1 if the command fails. no in-between, we love a clean binary 😌

🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

ok so here's how you actually create a shared secret device. The secret gets split between a slice on a local disk and a USB Pen drive:

gshsec label -v secret /dev/ada0s1 /dev/da0
newfs /dev/shsec/secret

From now on, when the USB Pen drive is inserted, it will be automatically detected and connected, making the secret available via the /dev/shsec/secret device. iconic behaviour honestly 🎀✨

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

geom(4), geom(8), newfs(8)

👑 HISTORY 👑

The gshsec utility appeared in FreeBSD 5.4. vintage, but make it slay 💜

🍓 AUTHORS 🍓

Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd@FreeBSD.org> — thank you for your service 🫡💖

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and that's the page, bestie! this little beauty is from the Debian gang, dated October 1, 2013 — so like, a whole era ago, but the info still eats 🌸🦋💅