Installation problems. Suspected cryptsetup issue.

jrave · 10-10-2016, 05:51 AM

Hi All,

I'm installing LMDE(Debian) on a dual boot laptop. I'm sure my life would be simpler if I didn't have to dual boot, and I rarely use the other partitions, but I need them for some stuff for work occasionally.

I've created a 100M partition in /dev/sda6 for /boot, and sda7 is to be a ~700G encrypted volume, containing a 10G swap space, and the rest for /.

Installation went well. I've created fstab and cryptab etc, enabled initramfs modules, updated-initramfs and rebooted.

I get grub shell.

I've booted into liveUSB to have a look, run `cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda7 LMDE`, and get prompted fo my passphrase, which passes and the volume is unlocked.

Now, when I run `sudo lvs`, I get this:

Code:

  LV   VG   Attr       LSize   Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  root LMDE -wi------- 695.82g                                                    
  swap LMDE -wi-------  10.16g

Now I'm not entirely clued up on logical volumes, but I'm happy that my volumes have persisted, to me this means they exist. I've notice the attributes are slightly different than they were when I created them before.

When I run `lsblk` I get this:

Code:

NAME         MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda            8:0    0   1.4T  0 disk  
├─sda1         8:1    0   650M  0 part  
├─sda2         8:2    0   260M  0 part  
├─sda3         8:3    0   128M  0 part  
├─sda4         8:4    0 689.4G  0 part  
├─sda5         8:5    0   854M  0 part  
├─sda6         8:6    0    95M  0 part  
└─sda7         8:7    0   706G  0 part  
  └─lvmlocal 254:0    0   706G  0 crypt

Which suggests they don't exist. And they are not accessible devices in /dev/mapper/.

Any clue why this discrepancy? I feel it might be a clue as to why I can't boot at the moment.

Many thanks..

jrave · 10-10-2016, 06:37 AM

Ok, so after running `vgchange -a y` The volumes are activated and I can not mount and browse them.
So I'm now thinking it's not a luks issue (although i've not had to manually activate a volume before?) but a grub issue. I',m not getting the menu, so not looking at my init image yet. I'll try and figue out when grub records it's issues

Oh! Just had a thought. When I installed, the liveUSB was calling itself sda, and my hd was sdb, now it's the other way around for some reason. perhaps grub is looking for sdb when it should be sda...

jrave · 10-10-2016, 11:59 AM

confirmed faulty grub install.

I ran apt-get install --reinstall grub2

and then realised I should be running the grub-install command instead. I did that and pointed it at the correct partition and grub loads ok.

Now though, I'm back to the original problem, as grub loads the boot image, and dm-crypt tries to read my volume but fails repeatedly. Saying that no volumes are detected.

Could this be to do with the fact that my volumes seem to need manual activation each time I decrypt the partition?

jrave · 10-10-2016, 01:18 PM

So, is this a hard question, or am I just that bad at asking questions?

syg00 · 10-10-2016, 05:55 PM

Both.
Keeping those balls in the air is hard enough, let alone without sufficient detail. There is only one set of eyes actually looking at your system.
Inadequate data => less than satisfying answers.

Give a link to the doco you are following to build this.
If you had to correct grub, what about crypttab ?.
Are the hooks in the initramfs in the correct order ?.
What parameters are you passing to grub command line to indicate the root is encryptted ?.

Been a while (years probably) since I looked at LMDE, and I'm not a (native) Debian user so caveat emptor.