Bug#489544: installation-reports
I've just finished a similar installation with the Lenny beta 2
installer (encrypted lvm on bootable usb flash drive)
re Problem 1: I was able to delete the swap partition with your advise:
deleting both partitions, then the volumes, then making one volume.
Kinda cumbersome ... I guess it would be nice if there was a prompt
about swap vs. no swap, but it's also nice not to bother most people
with it.
re Problem 2: this time I didn't dd my drive ahead of time, I just let
the installer do its thing :P
re Problem 3: STILL A BIG PROBLEM. Here are the boot messages:
Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
Loading, please wait...
Volume group "socrates" not found
Setting up cryptographic volume sda2_crypt (based on /dev/sda2)
cryptsetup: Source device /dev/sda2 not found
[... wait about 5 seconds ...]
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[... forehead -> desk ...]
[... wait about a minute, then it drops to busybox because
the /dev/mapper/socrates-root_vol does not exist ...]
so, it looks like I will have to manually reroll the initramfs again. If
you want me to test again with a later version, I'll try and figure out
a way to do that :)
~David.
On Monday 28 July 2008 9:50 am, Jérémy Bobbio wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 06, 2008 at 01:21:00PM -0700, David L. Emerson wrote:
> > Image version: debian-40r3-i386-netinst.iso
> > […]
> >
> > This computer supports booting from USB, so I decided to install
debian
> > on a USB Flash drive. I wanted an encrypted root partition.
> >
> > PROBLEM 1. I first tried the "automatic" encrypted LVM setup. It
> > insisted upon making a swap partition, and I was unable to delete
that
> > partition. Of course I don't want a swap partition on a flash based
> > drive. I ultimately had to back up several steps and do a manual
setup.
>
> The automatic encrypted LVM setup create the swap partition as a
Logical
> Volume. The easiest (but not obvious) way to get rid of it would have
> been to:
> * go to "Configure the Logical Volume Manager",
> * remove both Logical Volumes (swap_1 and root),
> * create a new Logical Volume (root),
> * apply those changes,
> * configure the newly created Logical Volume (root) as /
>
> We could probably manage to detect that we are partitioning a Solid
> State Device, and skip the creation of a swap partition, but this
would
> require a fair amount of changes in partman. I doubt anyone will be
> working on that in the d-i team, but patches are more than welcome.
>
> > PROBLEM 2. Before I started the install, I used dd if=/dev/urandom
> > of=/dev/sda to write random data to the drive, which makes cracking
an
> > encrypted partition/drive much more difficult. However, the debian
> > installer insisted on writing (zeros?) to the to-be-encrypted
partition
> > before formatting. This was very time consuming, wasteful/redundant,
> > and perhaps a security liability as well. In fact, the installer did
> > this several times due to problem 1 ;)
> > I should be able to skip that writing since I already did it myself.
>
> The installer is not writing zeros. It is actually doing a similar
> process than the one you did by yourself! :)
>
> It can be avoided though when using manual partitioning, by switching
> "Erase data" to "no" while configuring the partition used as "physical
> volume for encryption".
>
> > PROBLEM 3. System would not boot!! .....
> >
> > It brought up the grub menu just fine, and began loading the kernel
and
> > initramfs. The problem occured when it tried to configure lvm
> > (/usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/lvm) -- the kernel had
> > not yet detected the presence of the USB Flash drive! Thus the call
to
> > activate_vg "$ROOT" was doomed to failure, since udev had not yet
> > discovered the root device. A few seconds after the failure
messages,
> > udev discovered the device -- udev had "settled" before running
> > local-top, but the USB event came later.
> > […]
>
> AFAIK, a lot of related issues have been fixed for Lenny. If you
could
> give it a try, it would be great.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Jérémy Bobbio .''`.
> lunar@debian.org : :Ⓐ : # apt-get install anarchism
> `. `'`
> `-
>
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