Kubuntu 9.04 and Encrypted LVM
 

It seems to me that a lot of people are raving about Ubuntu, so I thought I would give it a try. However, I'm running into some serious issues just getting the thing installed. I'm trying to get an LUKS+LVM setup I was using under Slackware.

Using the standard disc, I can't even connect to the network out of the box. Once I load the needed packages for wicd from a flash drive, I can connect to the internet and install cryptsetup, lvm, etc.... However, when I get to the partition setup part of the install, the window gets set to some ridiculous size, much taller than my display. I can't use it and resizing doesn't help. On to alternate....

The alternate disc, however, is unable to even MOUNT the lvm volumes. I modprobed the same modules I used on the desktop disc, but cryptsetup returns "No key available with this password" I really REALLY don't want to use the installer to recreate the volumes because a: I want to choose the cipher, and b.) I don't feel that wiping the disc and installing over existing partitions is acceptable practice. There should be a way to use the existing partitions. If the install gets messed up, I want to be able to reinstall the OS and leave my data alone.

My question, basically, is how do I install Kubuntu 9.04 on LUKS+LVM? I don't care what disc I have to use. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some recent articles on LVM that were on distrowatch weekly. The 2nd one discusses using LVM on several distros and includes a discussion on installing Ubuntu on LVM using the alternate install CD:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?is...090309#feature
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?is...090316#feature

Thanks, but while those articles are interesting, they don't solve the problem. My problem isn't that I can't create the LVMs, but that I can't USE them. More specifically, the alternate install disc can't open the LUKS.

That fails with "No key available with this password", which is an error that indicates one of the needed kernel modules is not loaded. I've already loaded dm-mod, aes, sha256, dm-crypt, etc.... but cryptsetup still returns that error. My question now I guess is what kernel modules do I need to use on the alternate disc to get cryptsetup to work?

OK, I gave up trying to open the existing LUKS and decided to make a new one. The problem now, that doesn't work either!

complains that it cannot "...setup dm-crypt key mapping." and that I should check the kernel support for the cipher. aes is already loaded though. I really don't understand this, because this is the exact same command I used when I created the LUKS on the desktop disc in the first place. The command I really want to use is....


using a different hash algorithm. That doesn't work either....