-*- org -*-
Debian 8.0 “jessie” or Ubuntu 15.10 “Wily Werewolf” (or later).
This is mostly for the support scripts which make sure that the client is installed and started in the initial RAM disk environment and that the initial RAM file system image file is automatically made unreadable. The server and client programs themselves could be run in other distributions, but they are specific to GNU/Linux systems, and are not written with portabillity to other Unixes in mind.
The following libraries and packages are needed. (It is possible that it might work with older versions of some of these, but these versions are confirmed to work. Newer versions are almost certainly OK.)
These are required to build the manual pages for both the server and client:
- DocBook 4.5 http://www.docbook.org/ Note: DocBook 5.0 is not compatible.
- DocBook XSL stylesheets 1.71.0 http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets
Package names: docbook docbook-xsl
To build just the documentation, run the command “make doc”. Then the manual page “mandos.8”, for example, can be read by running “man -l mandos.8”.
- GnuTLS 3.3 https://www.gnutls.org/
- Avahi 0.6.16 http://www.avahi.org/
- Python 2.7 https://www.python.org/
- dbus-python 0.82.4 https://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-python/
- PyGObject 3.7.1 https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/PyGObject
- pkg-config https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config/
- Urwid 1.0.1 http://urwid.org/ (Only needed by the “mandos-monitor” tool.)
Strongly recommended:
- fping 2.4b2-to-ipv6 http://www.fping.org/
- ssh-keyscan from OpenSSH http://www.openssh.com/
Package names: avahi-daemon python python-dbus python-gi python-urwid pkg-config fping ssh-client
- GNU C Library 2.16 https://gnu.org/software/libc/
- initramfs-tools 0.85i https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/initramfs-tools
- GnuTLS 3.3 https://www.gnutls.org/
- Avahi 0.6.16 http://www.avahi.org/
- GnuPG 1.4.9 https://www.gnupg.org/
- GPGME 1.1.6 https://www.gnupg.org/related_software/gpgme/
- pkg-config https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config/
Strongly recommended:
- OpenSSH http://www.openssh.com/
Package names: initramfs-tools libgnutls-dev libavahi-core-dev gnupg libgpgme11-dev pkg-config ssh
- Do “make doc”.
- On the computer to run as a Mandos server, run the following
command:
For Debian: su -c ‘make install-server’
For Ubuntu: sudo make install-server
(This creates a configuration without any clients configured; you need an actually configured client to do that; see below.)
- Do “make all doc”.
- On the computer to run as a Mandos client, run the following
command:
For Debian: su -c ‘make install-client’
For Ubuntu: sudo make install-client
This will also create an OpenPGP key, which will take some time and entropy, so be patient.
- Run the following command:
For Debian: su -c ‘mandos-keygen –password’
For Ubuntu: sudo mandos-keygen –password
When prompted, enter the password/passphrase for the encrypted root file system on this client computer. The command will output a section of text, starting with a [section header]. Copy and append this to the file “/etc/mandos/clients.conf” on the server computer.
- Configure the client to use any special configuration needed for your local system. Note: This is not necessary if the server is present on the same wired local network as the client. If you do make changes to /etc/mandos/plugin-runner.conf, the initrd.img file must be updated, possibly using the following command:
- On the server computer, start the server by running the command
For Debian: su -c ‘invoke-rc.d mandos start’
For Ubuntu: sudo service mandos start
At this point, it is possible to verify that the correct password will be received by the client by running the command:
–pubkey=/etc/keys/mandos/pubkey.txt \ –seckey=/etc/keys/mandos/seckey.txt; echo
This command should retrieve the password from the server, decrypt it, and output it to standard output.
After this, the client computer should be able to reboot without needing a password entered on the console, as long as it does not take more than five minutes to reboot.
You may want to tighten or loosen the timeouts in the server configuration files; see mandos.conf(5) and mandos-clients.conf(5). If IPsec is not used and SSH is not installed, it is suggested that a more cryptographically secure checker program is used and configured, since, without IPsec, ping packets can be faked.