Why would enabling FIPS mode in the kernel break CIFS mounts?
Issue
- CIFS mounts work well as long as FIPS mode is disabled.
- Enabling FIPS mode and rebooting the server results in CIFS mounts failing. The kernel logs show this as:
CIFS VFS: could not allocate crypto hmacmd5
CIFS VFS: could not setup hash structures rc -2
CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -2
- The only difference between the success or failure of the CIFS mount is fips mode as enabled via fips=1 on the kernel command line in grub.conf.
- Is FIPS mode supported with CIFS mounts?
Environment
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
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