When on 2013-12-28 Saturday I started to install Wheezy on my new desktop computer in Thailand the partitions I tried to install were the same ones I used with Squeeze in one of my computers in Canada -- RAID1 with two HDDs, two partitions, one with /boot only and the other a LVM with everything else. Swap and /tmp were encrypted with a random key; and /home with an assigned key.
Attempting the same partition configuration with Wheezy over innumerable installation attemps produced various errors -- more about those later. Three essential points however were made by all those who responded to my original post.
First, do not move too fast; start with the simple, e.g. BIOS instead of UEFI (I did find out that UEFI in Wheezy is not yet suitable for humanoid use.), no RAID, no LVM, no encryption, as few partitions as possible to start with. Then one by one add those "complications" as each one worked -- or not.
Second, do not install the desktop environment until I had a working system without it. Third, use all the Wheezy defaults, e.g. ext4, not xfs.
On many installations using various combinations of RAID1, LVM and encryption I was able to get a working command line only machine. The one constant error was inablility to accept in any partition configuration an encrypted /tmp partition. The message I received when I tried was "error: couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features (240)", and then on the next few lines
"mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/TH-tmp_crypt, missing code page or other error."
Otherwise from the command line I was able for example to install several utility packages, run my own script files for such things a file backups, using vim add entries to /etc/fstab, /etc/apt.sources.list, and on one occasion compile a package.
Brian in his answer suggested that after I have a usable command line system in a tty I should install the metapackage xorg and a window manager too. So, as he suggested I did the following.
> apt-get install xorg fvwm
>
> and then 'startx'. Play about with what you have; reboot a few times to
> make sure everything (mouse, keyboard, display etc) works.
At this point running startx -- I did so both as root and as my user in a separate tty-- caused the letters "fvwm" to appear briefly on the screen and then a blank screen with ideograms in the lower corners. I could move the mouse around but clicking on anything had no effect.
Furthermore it was no longer possible to open any of the other tty terminals -- nor was it possible to return to either of the two terminals where i ran startx -- the machine seized up. The only recourse at this point was the off-on switch. Rebooting at this point produced tty1 where I was able to log in as root.
> You want something more complex to use with X ? Xfce?
>
> apt-get install xfce4 lightdm
In view of the previous failures I logged in as root, installed xfce4 and lightdm and then rebooted. The login window appreared; I logged in as my user. It appears that xfce is usable. Shifting however to any one of tty1 through tty6 always produced a blank screen, and caused the machine to seize up.
One thing I found strange was that just before the full size login screen opened there appeared very briefly ten miniature copies of the login screen in two rows of five each across the top half of the monitor and a nondescript pattern in the lower half.
For some of the experimental partition configurations, after reaching tty1 I was able to do the usual things one can do from the command line, but as soon as I rebooted after installing xorg, xfce4 and lightdm the login screen would appear but would not accept my login. When I was experimenting with RAID1 in the partition mix I was also able to work in tty1, but when I rebooted after installing those three DE packages the boot scrollby produced the message "RAID1 not okay" with the same result previously described -- my user login was not accepted.
In all cases where I was able on boot to go into the grub recovery mode and then run dmesg and cat syslog I could not find anything there that would give me any indication of what was wrong, but then I really would not know what to look for. In any event something is clearly remiss in either the software or the hardware -- possibly both -- to prevent the OS from working properly. I would consequently appreciate it very much if anyone could tell me whether there anything that can be done to make it work properly.
Ken Heard