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This is so specific... I'd like to be able to remotely log-in to a server.

  1. When it first boots it would run a script or set of instructions to contact an external server based upon network-hook (should yeild IP, doesn't need to be on the web, can just be network accessible)
  2. The web-hook will log IP, username
  3. In a background queue a network accessible external system can ssh in (assuming this is enabled by default with public-private key-pair) and setup an encrypted mount.
  4. The key would be stored externally to the server with the mount
  5. On boot it would trigger a request mount where the remote PC would connect and mount the device.

Further detail?

  • Is this possible via CLI alone?
  • If this is not possible, are there other cli (unattended scriptable) alternatives
  • Are there any open-source projects that can ease the administration of this?
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My understanding of your question is that you want machine A to be able mount an encrypted drive - automatically/unattended/without user input - using a key stored on machine B.

If this is the intention, then you don't need SSH - there are easier ways just to let A fetch the key material from B.

For example, you can fetch the key over https, use link-local IPv6 UDP packets or consider mandos (which tries to solve a more complex problem, and is itself more complex accordingly).

These approaches all use 'keyscripts' (broadly) to take some action other than requesting a user-entered password in order to obtain key material. Not all GNU/Linux distributions support these smoothly, but Debian-derived ones (including Ubuntu) do.

(All the approaches I've linked above also try to support remote unlocking from an initramfs/initrd environment, but they'll work just as well once a machine is fully booted up.)

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  • I still haven't solved this, for now it means I'm doing it after init based upon user login. The user home folder is encrypted and protected file access key is in the user folder, so ansible logs in as user, which mounts the partition via sudo. It seems messy AF
    – MrMesees
    Jun 14, 2018 at 12:23

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