Encrypted partition won't mount "device ... does not exist"

CRC123 · 12-31-2008, 05:06 PM

I'm using openSuSE 11.1 64-bit

At install time I set up an encrypted partition and it's not suppose to try and mount it at boot time. However, it does try and mount it at boot time and when I'm not there to enter the pass phrase it obviously fails. When this happens, I can't mount it once booted because the encryption/decryption device never gets created. (unmounting/mounting the partition works fine when I enter the pass phrase at boot time).

Here are some (snippets)files for reference:

Code:

#/etc/fstab
..
/dev/mapper/cr_vg00-vol0 <encrypted mount point>       ext3       noauto,acl,user_xattr 0 0
..

Code:

#/etc/crypttab
..
cr_vg00-vol0    /dev/vg00/vg00-vol0  none       none
..

Code:

/var/log/boot.msg
..
#the following line appears multiple times
Please enter passphrase for /dev/vg00/vg00-vol0 (cr_vg00-vol0): 
98: kill: (2005) - No such process
/dev/vg00/vg00-vol0... failed
..

This is the output of the mount command when trying to mount the encrypted partion:

Code:

~> sudo mount <partition>
mount: special device /dev/mapper/cr_vg00-vol0 does not exist

I think I can create the encryption/decryption device myself, but I don't want to have to do that.

What I want is to have it not try to mount the partition at boot time and be able to mount it manually once the computer is booted when I need to access the partition.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

amani · 12-31-2008, 05:12 PM

You can disable mounting that from 'services'

#man cryptmount

CRC123 · 12-31-2008, 05:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by amani

You can disable mounting that from 'services'

#man cryptmount

I have no service/command called cryptmount. Please post more detailed info about what you mean.

CRC123 · 12-31-2008, 09:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CRC123

I have no service/command called cryptmount. Please post more detailed info about what you mean.

Ok, I looked through the service list and found the one that I think amani was mentioning. On openSUSE, it's called 'boot.crypto'.

To "fix" the problem, this is what I did:

1. KEEP the 'boot.crypto' service starting at boot.
2. In the /etc/crypttab file, I added 'timeout=10' to the OPTIONS column
- This causes the pass phrase prompt to timeout after 10 seconds
3. To mount the encrypted partition, I run 'sudo /etc/init.d/boot.crypto start' and it prompts me for the pass phrase and then it automatically mounts it.

I would still like to be able to use just the 'mount' command but I guess this will suffice.

amani · 01-02-2009, 08:31 AM

You can disable that during boot.

Maybe cryptmount needs the whole path in your system.
On almost all distros, that is the standard for quite sometime (incl suse10+).

or check for that in your package manager