Newbie: timeout in crypttab being ignored

**supremedalek** · July 15th, 2010

Quick and easy question: I have in my /etc/crypttab something like this:

Code:

funkydevice     /dev/sda5 none            luks,timeout=30

I tell the machine to reboot and it asks as it should for the password. Waiting to see if it will timeout for 30 seconds, I do not type the password. And wait and wait and wait. And nothing happens. Am I missing something here?

**cariboo** · July 15th, 2010

What is it that you expect to happen after the 30 second time-out?

**supremedalek** · July 15th, 2010

I was hoping something on the lines of

The timeout option specifies the time in seconds to wait for the password before timing out

What would it do after that timeout expires? Does it tell no password/passphrase was entered and then prompts for a new one or just waits for user intervention?

**viralmeme** · July 15th, 2010

Originally Posted by cariboo907

What is it that you expect to happen after the 30 second time-out?

Maybe this is what he is referring to ..

You will be prompted for the password at boot. In this example we have set a maximum of 3 attempts per reboot, and an automatic timeout on password entry after 60 seconds. That's important if you access your system over a network and don't have physical access.

http://besy.co.uk/debian/how_to_setu..._with_dm-crypt

**supremedalek** · July 15th, 2010

viralmeme, that is exactly what I had in mind.

I know how to do that is quite obvious for most here, but it baffles me. I have tries=5 and timeout=20 and I can walk away from the machine and come back in an hour and it would still be patiently waiting for the passphrase. This is a fresh install of 10.04 LTS if that matters.

One thing I noticed is that timeout is not mentioned in the man page for crypttab in my 10.04 LTS install, but it is mentioned in http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...rypttab.5.html. Could it have been deprecated/removed?

**chaitatp** · September 15th, 2012

I am having the same problem. "timeout" option doesn't seem to work.

Debian 6.0

**overdrank** · September 15th, 2012

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