Setting up encrypted root partition

yukon65 · 07-03-2007, 02:25 AM

Just thinking yesterday, "I would like to give Slackware a try" and here is Slackware 12.0 all shiny and new... Happy day! :-)

Just wanted to flag a problem I experienced setting up a encrypted root partition (hda5 on my laptop) and a workaround to save others some grief. I used the README_CRYPT.TXT on the first install CD as a reference... everything worked fine up till the point I exited setup and chroot'ed into my new Slackware under /mnt to edit my lilo.conf... when I ran 'lilo' I got a fatal error about the missing /dev/mapper/cryptroot...

Turns out /dev/mapper/cryptroot was created earlier, but its missing from /mnt/dev/mapper... The solution was to switch to another terminal and 'cp -a /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/dev/wrapper'... Plus, if you want lilo installed in the MBR you should *not* alter the 'boot =' option as the README_* recommends... It was already correctly configured as 'boot = /dev/hda'

Otherwise, the README_CRYPT.TXT was a very helpful HOWTO in setting up encrypted partitions on a fresh install.

Alien Bob · 07-03-2007, 06:31 AM

Hi

I added your recommendations to http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/...lackware:setup

This URL is referenced at the end of the README_CRYPT.TXT and hopefully people will check it for updates when they to create an encrypted partition.

Thanks for the feeedback, Eric

Zmyrgel · 07-03-2007, 02:47 PM

It's pretty sweet that slackware finally supports encrypted partitions straight from the CD's.

Gotta make reinstall as soon as I get a working 12.0 DVD ready.

-kc- · 07-18-2007, 09:51 AM

yukon65, I was about to point out the same thing, but I see I'm not the first one to experience this

Alien Bob, for some reason your fix doesn't work for me:

Code:

# mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc  #OK
# mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys  #OK
# mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev
missing codepage or other error

Instead of running just lilo I exited from chroot /mnt and ran lilo -C /mnt/etc/lilo.conf and it worked. No problem with /boot since it's a symlink to /mnt/boot.