I use full encryption on this net-book, with the help of LUKS. One key part of the setup is to configure /etc/sysconfig/bootloader with the initial boot options (along the lines of
root=/dev/mapper/root luks_root=/dev/sda5 luks_home=/dev/sda5 luks_swap=/dev/sda2 luks="root home swap"
). That way a kernel update is installed properly, usually…
I just did a kernel update this weekend and the next time I booted the machine it failed in a mess, with only
root=/dev/mapper/root
left of my options. Luckily I could remember what was needed to re-instate the extra bits - but what had happened to the /etc/sysconfig/bootloader?
So normally I edit this file /etc/sysconfig/bootloader as root to add in the nomodeset command I use, to ensure all new installed kernels use it and to change the vga= value if not to my likely. I don’t by default have a root= line but you can make a copy of that line and then place a # in front so as to have a comment with the exact command in it. For anyone that needs or wants to edit such files as root, but while using a standard file manager might want to look at the following link. The script is called fewrup, its designed to edit files as root, from a non root file managers and make a backup of the file that you edit.
So I looked at my copy and the last time it changed was on 7-9-11, but I am not sure if I updated my default kernel then or not. I just can say for sure about that but I am not aware of this file being changed on a regular basis.
The problem that I had resulted in /home not being mounted, so there was no user log-on. Hence I did the original fix from a command-line root log-in with vi.
For more everyday edit-as-root activities I generally use “kdesu kwrite”, (I have a simple desktop icon for this), and - when I remember - I use that editor to save a copy of the original file with the date appended such as /boot/grub/menu.lst.20110814. This time the backups were of no real use to me
I thought that the whole point of this file was that YaST and friends would NOT edit it, but instead use it to generate e.g. /boot/grub/menu.lst
I have not seen this problem on 2 other machines with a similar LUKS set-up, so maybe it was something that I corrupted without knowing…
