New Tumbleweed installation with existing LUKS /home partition

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi,

I am an experienced Linux user, using Gentoo in all my systems, but I’m considering installing Tumbleweed in my laptop (to be honest, I got a bit tired of all the compilation and Tumbleweed seems to be my rolling distro of choice). This is a i5 laptop, with 16GB RAM, using the CPU’s GPU for graphics. My /home partition is LUKS encrypted and during boot, the system asks for the password to decrypt it and mount it normally (it’s ext4 formatted). I use systemd as a init system.

The question is: I want to keep my /home as is and install Tumbleweed. Would I be able to setup the /home partition at installation (meaning will I be able to insert the password during boot)? Is there some special configuration or installation step to keep the existing /home usable?

Thank you!

#2

Yes, you should be able to do that.

During install, it will ask for the encryption key of that LUKS partition. Provide it.

When you are given a partitioning proposal (also during install), you will need to use the “expert partitioner”. And take the option to start with the original partitioning (rather than with the proposed partitioning).

Then setup the partitions the way that you want. It should show your “/home” as encrypted. You will have to set that to be mounted at “/home” but do not format it. Of course, you will also need a partition for the root file system, and that one will need to be formatted.

#3

Thank you! I will try it! :slight_smile: