non-root loopback crypto

[Mike Furr <furrm@kenyon.edu>]

hi all,

I've been using the loopback crypto stuff for a while and I'm looking
for a secure way of doing this from my user account instead of having to
su to call losetup.
Does anyone have suggestions / experience with doing this?

I see that you can't just run /sbin/losetup from non-root:
$ losetup -e blowfish /dev/loop0 ~/.crypt
 memlock: Operation not permitted
 Couldn't lock into memory, exiting.

Is there any other permissions that I can set other than the /dev/loop*
stuff to allow me to do this from non-root? or do I have to go the suid
route? or is this just not a good idea all together?

thanks for any comments,
-mike