oh NO!

[Horace Gilchrist]

Usually the file name is something like geli.key

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Thanks, and many thanks to everyone that has reached out to offer assistance and advice. These gestures have taken most of the sting away from the data loss. When I either find the key or another solution I will share... Sincerely,

 

[Horace Gilchrist]

Anyone know the directory location for the encryption key in FreeNAS 11 RC?

 

[Ericloewe]

Absolutely nowhere, I hope, otherwise it's not of much use. You're supposed to store them safely elsewhere.

 

[Stux]

I saw a post on this forum where someone managed to recover the key off a corrupted USB drive... but you zeroed it.

:(

Effectively you securely destroyed your data using best practices.

Your only hope is to recover the key from a backup.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Anyone know the directory location for the encryption key in FreeNAS 11 RC?

/data/geli/*.key should be the location. An example name is something like 544eafe2-afcc-4223-af97-9b5119750004.key

I also just testing things for you and I scp'ed that key file off my system then detached my disks and reimported the volume and provided they key I scp'ed off and it decrypted the volume.

EDIT: hmmm the more i poke around the more i don't think this is going to work. /data a mount point from your pool i think. This means if your pool is gone you can't access /data. Still poking around a little to learn some more.

 

[IceBoosteR]

Hello Horace,

I feel for you, really. Makes me always said when reading stories like this. Its always rembering me at the point where I have lost my pool when upgrading to Corral.

So back to your problem:
Maybe when you was promted to save your backup of the encryption key you have downloaded it temporary to you computer. With a good tool, like Recuva, you may be able to restore it. Otherwise, you can find Brute-Force software on the internet, but if you know how many letters the passphrase has, or know some specific letter form the passphrase itself, you can make the brute force easier. But with that said, it's really a like looking for the needle in the haystack.
The good point is, it's only AES-128, not 256 ...
Go for a cluster in Amazon AWS for cracking that pool, if it is worth it for you.

Do you really have no backup? No external drive?

Best wishes,

IceBoosteR