salix with lvm and luks

[efklides]

Hello everyone,

Please consider adding support for lvm and luks during the installation.
Also remove the "auto-reboot" feature.
Thanks
keep up the good work

p.s. If I `ll find some time I`ll try to change some things to salix installation procedure and give feedback.

[pwatk]

Nice to see I'm not the only one .

[damNageHack]

It was already asked for lvm support for several times, by me and others. Looking forward what the answer will be at this time, do not expect too much

Search function of this forums is your friend ...

http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic. ... &hilit=lvm
http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic. ... &hilit=lvm
http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic. ... &hilit=lvm
http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic. ... &hilit=lvm
http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic. ... &hilit=lvm

And here a ticket from me for lvm support in setup ...

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/salix/ticket/214

[pwatk]

To be fair though, it's no hardship to add the required packages to the installation. Especially if your installing from a USB flash drive, you can add/remove packages as you like .

Alternatively you could just use slapt-get whilst your in chroot (since your gonna be there anyway). It's a bit more work if you're wireless but I took this approach the first time I did it and everything went without a hitch. That said, I did have my rc.inet1.conf and wpa_supplicant.conf to hand from my previous Slackware installation and I have an Atheros card supported by the kernel (no messing about with firmware required).

[lumak]

Just because not all the information on the subject is in one place, here are some of the things I've discovered by doing this type of setup with salix.


Follow the guides on the Slackware CD or repository. README.LVM.TXT README.CRYPT.TXT

To implement in salix, pick a keyboard configuration, then exit setup. Perform the crypt setup steps and relaunch the setup. Don't restart, just enter 'setup' in the console. Install salix as normal picking the 'easy' lilo install. At the end of the salix install it will attempt to auto restart. If you are quick enough, press CTRL C to stop it. If not just reboot with the CD and remount your slaix partitions to /mnt

After everything from the readme had been done and you are chrooted to /mnt you will need to add the cryptsetup-1.0.7-i486-1 package from comparable Slackware version (IE: salix 13.0.2a = slackware 13.0 + patches) This could have been added to a custom salix install CD or simply just use a USB stick, mount it, and add it.

A few 'gotchas' to keep in mind:
- Older BIOS can not boot an initrd image if you use the 'huge' kernel from salix. Unless you are using hardware designed for less than a gig of ram or older than a Pentium 3/4/M ish, then you should be fine. Solution? compile your own kernel, package it, and try again. If you only have one computer this may mean doing a normal install first and a really long compile time.

- USB keyboards can not be used unless you include the correct driver in the initrd image... I think it's 'usbhid' for USB human interface devices.

- USB sticks with key files can not be used with Salix 13.0.2a unless you try and work in a mkinitrd package from slackware-current. This would also require including various USB block device modules into the initrd image.

- The actual values are a bit vague when setting up lilo and the mkinitrd config file.
# This is your encrypted LVM partition.
LUKSDEV=/dev/hda2
# This is the root lvm partition within the salix volume group. It's the partition that includes:
# / /bin /lib /sbin, and the rest of the core directories required for booting
ROOTDEV=/dev/salix/root

if you run mkinitrd without a config file, remember you need at least '-C /dev/hda2 -r /dev/salix/root' That's a capital C!

In the lilo.conf, you will enter /dev/salix/root as root partition to boot in the 'linux bootable partition' section.

I've done this three times so far and I messed up everytime but eventually made it work.

[damNageHack]

Just because not all the information on the subject is in one place, here are some of the things I've discovered by doing this type of setup with salix.


Follow the guides on the Slackware CD or repository. README.LVM.TXT README.CRYPT.TXT
(...)

Hey, thanks. I had no knowledge of the Readme.

In my opinion and however, this can be done more easily with setup itself being tweaked in code. See for example Fedora (without advertisement here, just as an example!) doing all the stuff for you automatically (LVM is even default configuration there).

I would work on a patch or an addon for lvm support in setup but I doubt I would find the time to.

[pwatk]

OpenSUSE has the nicest frontend for these tasks but for us geeks simply including lvm, cryptsetup, kernel-generic and mdadm in the setup is enough IMO.

[damNageHack]

OpenSUSE has the nicest frontend

Why? Fedora is (also?) very good in doing LVM stuff. Partitioning is done as default with LVM volumes at installation time.
LVM support is considered as default functionality nowadays.
But BTW: Naming other distributions here in SALIX forums is not very well seen.

[gapan]

But BTW: Naming other distributions here in SALIX forums is not very well seen.

You know, there is a whole section in our forums dedicated to other distributions, so you might want to take that back.

[pwatk]

LVM support is considered as default functionality nowadays.

I do realise that but writing a frontend to do it for you I'm sure isn't all that easy.

Naming other distributions here in SALIX forums is not very well seen

Fair enough but I don't see why. The frontend they (Fedora, Suse or any other distro) use for partitioning isn't the sum total of the distribution, it's an application like any other! Further more, by providing examples from other distro's might encourage development or at least provide inspiration for such a frontend in future Salix releases should that be deemed necessary.

Personally I'd like to see all the required packages included first... one thing at a time