Hi there. I’ve installed opensuse 11.4 by doing a network install, (boot off kernel + initrd, everything else is fetched off network) and i skipped the bootloader part because i’ve already got two other linux systems set up with grub2 on my computer.
I picked the minimal server install (text mode) and didn’t make any other software selectiono changes.
My partition layout is as follows
ssd drive contains / partitions for distributions (GPT layout)
hdd drive contains encrypted lvm PV (PV on a luks partition). inside that PV is a VG with volumes for /home and /var (and other), where each distribution has its own /var.
The problem is that i cannot get initrd to open the luks properly. i tried chrooting, rebuilding the image with mkinitrd -f “lvm2 luks” ( i saw that somewhere on opensuse wiki, i think ) and adding boot parameters like this : lvm_box=/dev/disk/by-uuid/<luks partiiton UUID> lvm=“box” (where box is the name of the lvm array).
Problems:
- i’m never asked for luks password. initrd waits for specified devices to appear and most likely times out. I also tried adding a line to /etc/crypttab with “ASK” for key/password method.
- it doesn’t open luks, it cannot access LVM
- i end up with r/o root and recovery shell.
- mkinitrd doesn’t list luks or anything cryptsetup related as available module, even though all cryptsetup related packages are installed.
- mkinitrd + cryptsetup lacks documentation. i had to look through the actual script to see a hint of boot parameters i should use.
other issues
- installer cannot create GPT partitions. i had to have them prepared beforehand.
Eventually i gave up and built an initrd with dracut. That works. Can someone pinpoint me in the right direction to proceed with mkinitrd?