Re: MBR partitioning, and content after partition table but before first partition

[David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com>]

On 03/10/2017 12:49 AM, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 09, 2017 at 09:04:56PM -0800, David Christensen wrote:
> > I use LUKS swap (random key) and root (passphrase).  I think it's the piece
> > of the boot chain that gives me the LUKS prompt for root (before the GRUB
> > menu).
>
> You get that prompt *before* GRUB?
>
> I use LUKS everywhere and only get it after, because the prompt is (normally)
> issued from my initrd.

You're right, I mis-remembered -- I get the Grub menu and then the LUKS 
passphrase prompt for root.


> (although I historically put /boot outside of the
> encryption. Maybe this is some newer scheme I am not familiar with).

My boot partition is also unencrypted.


> > So, the moral of the story appears to be:
> >
> >     When taking an image of a Debian system drive, be sure to copy the
> >     blocks between the partition table and the first partition, as there
> >     may be boot loader code there.
>
> I'd always put a step 0) in there: is imaging what you want to do? Consider
> a file-level backup with rsync (etc etc, as discussed elsewhere in this
> thread)

I do imaging for system disks.  I do backups and archives for data.


David