I had to reinstall Tumbleweed on top of itself to resolve a previous problem, and since then the disk decryption prompt appears twice before GRUB will appear, whereas before it would only appear once. I also notice that the drive/volume identifiers are different for the two prompts:
**Welcome to GRUB!**
error: ../../grub-core/disk/efi-efidisk.c:524:invalid sector size 65535.
Attempting to decrypt master key...
Enter passphrase for hd2,gpt5 ({IDENTIFIER ENDING 9fc5}) :
{FIRST PROMPT FOR KEYBOARD INPUT HERE}
Slot 0 opened
error: ../../grub-core/disk/efi-efidisk.c:524:invalid sector size 65535.
Attempting to decrypt master key...
Enter passphrase for lvm/system-root ({IDENTIFIER ENDING bc3e}) :
{SECOND PROMPT FOR KEYBOARD INPUT HERE}
Can someone tell me how I’ve managed to configure things this time round so that I have to enter the same decryption password multiple times just to reach GRUB? Note that I also have to enter the decryption password again after GRUB (if I opt to boot into Linux instead of Windows) but that’s always been the case. Is there a (safe, easy) way to drop back to only having to enter the decryption password once before GRUB appears?
Also, that “invalid sector size” error has been present for years, both on my new NVMe M.2 drive, and on my previous mechanical HDD. Does everyone get that error, or is it a sign of trouble on my desktop rig?
I’m surprised that actually works.
Here’s what I think you have done:
1: You have an encrypted partition hd2,gpt5 (partition 5 on whatever disk it is looking at). And you have used that encrypted partition as the physical volume for an LVM. The LVM in turn is divided into logical volumes, one of which is named “root” (or “system-root” which usually means volume “root” within the bigger LVM named “system”.
2: You have separately encrypted that logical volume.
This was probably an install mistake, and you will need to reinstall to fix that.
I see that when I install into an existing LVM. I am given the option of selecting encyption for those individual logical volumes. I have managed to restrain myself from doing that, on the principle that if the entire LVM is encrypted then I should not need to encrypt individual volumes within that LVM. I will, however, admit that the installer does not make that obvious. So you seem to have made an easy-to-make mistake.
As for “invalid sector size” – I don’t actually know, so I am just guessing here. I think it may be telling you something about that EFI partition. If you happen to have Windows on your machine, you might try running CHKDSK on that partition.
grub scans all disks. This message tells us that some disk returns sector size 65535 which grub rejects (grub expects it to be power of 2). UEFI specification does not say anything about possible values.
If there is valid block device that actually has such sector size this needs to be reported to grub upstream.
It sounds like I’ve encrypted the partition holding the LVM, and then the LVM itself, and presumably (seeing as I’m presented with a third decryption prompt) also the home directory within that LVM? That must do wonders for the data throughput rate on the home partition, with three layers of encryption to get through.
I’m also going to blame the expert partitioner here, as it was less than clear how to just wipe the root volume and leave home in place, while keeping other configurations as they were (and even then the Windows Boot Manager got nuked in the process). But right now it’s just good to be past that upgrade spike pit and back into a working openSUSE desktop, so I’m not going to hurry to attempt another reinstall.
That seems right.
When you are in the expert partitioner, it should tell you that the partition itself is already encrypted. And then you have to remember to not also encrypt the volumes within that partition – they don’t need that extra level of encryption.