passwords and hashes

I'm looking into how passwords should be transferred into keys for the
loopback filesystem in Linux.  Currently, what happens is that you
take the SHA or RIPEMD-160 hash of the password string and use that as
a key.  If the cipher only uses a 128-bit key, the last 32 bits of the
hash is unused.  I have some questions about this scheme:

o In the case of a 128-bit cipher, do I lose any information by not
  using the last 32 bits of information?  Should the last 32 bits be
  xored with the first 128 in order to not lose any info?

o Is there any advantage to _not_ using a 256-bit hash function? (i.e
  - use a 128-bit hash for 128-bit ciphers).  Currently there are lots
  of AES ciphers that don't get fed a 256-bit key because we only have
  a 160-bit hash.

o Is there a good 256-bit hash function?  I don't know of any other
  than snefru.  In this application, speed doesn't matter much.
  Should I use a 256-bit cipher instead maybe?

o Is it safe to always take the hash of the password, or is it better to
  use the password directly as the key if it is less than 16
  characters for 128-bit cipher?

astor

-- 
 Alexander Kjeldaas, Guardian Networks AS, Trondheim, Norway
 http://www.guardian.no/