8.10 alternate installer breaks in multiple ways with raid/luks/lvm

[Mikko Rauhala]

So. I tried to do an install of 8.10 on a mirrored encrypted lvm, with /boot on a separate mirror. With the alternate installer of course, since it's funky stuff.

First thing I noticed was that the partitioning tool forgets that I said to use the /boot mirror as /boot every time I do some luks and lvm setup. No biggie, just a reinstall with me reminding the installer of this at the end. Yay. Success. Or is it?

No. The system doesn't boot but tosses me into the initrd shell prompt. With no query of the LUKS password at all. So it doesn't even seem to try to set up LUKS at all.

'course, after I cryptsetup manually, I do get my md1_crypt. But wait, it isn't the lvm physical volume. Turns out the installer creates a "partition" (!) on the md1_crypt volume called md1_cryptp1 and installs there. I lose interest in finding the correct magic (presumably dmsetup is involved) to set that up even manually. This may be related to Debian bug 494910. Except it was really well hidden in the Ubuntu installer, didn't complain. Just asked to create a partition. I didn't think much of it since it asked that in the previous release as well. It just didn't actually, you know make it, so I figured it's just a silly partman internal thing where it has to think everything has partitions in it.

Sooyeah. In the future, you know, it'd probably cover quite a few installation failure scenarios if you'd just see if a raid/luks/lvm install manages to boot.

Meanwhile, I'll ponder about doing a fresh 8.04 and then upgrading, or switching to Debian unstable...

[Mikko Rauhala (mjr-iki)]

By the way, I did the 8.04 route. I seem to have forgotten that it didn't setup the dm_crypt root properly either, basically forgoing the creation of /etc/crypttab. Manually creating that and running mkinitrd again fixes the bootup from the encrypted root. That part of the problem is probably the same still.

What I did recall correctly is that 8.04 didn't suffer from the problem of creating a spurious device mapper "partition" before being able to create an LVM PV on the encrypted volume (though I was also correct in that the installer wanted to make believe we were doing that).

[Stephan Diestelhorst (syon)]

I've just tried out a fresh Kubuntu 8.10 install (32 bit, alternate CD), with similar characteristics: Raid1 -> Luks -> LVM.

Result is the same, after booting for the first I do end up in the initrd and can manually luksOpen my RAID-device just fine, but LVM does not find any PV/VG/LVs.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Do you still have the broken installation? If so, it would really help me if you could attach /var/log/installer/syslog and /var/log/installer/partman from it.

If not, it would also help me if you could give me a precise recipe for reproducing this bug. (I don't have RAID-capable hardware, but can set it up in a virtual machine if need be.)

[Mikko Rauhala (mjr-iki)]

No I don't at least, sorry. However, RAID-capable hardware is not required, this was at least for me all with a software RAID setup. Should've said that, sorry.

Just go to manual partitioning, create (a) RAID device(s), initialize at least one for LUKS encryption (not the /boot one of course...), initialize that for LVM (it'll want to create the funky devicemapper "partition" [md1_cryptp1 or similar] at this point on the LUKS volume, so make a note of that - as said, earlier versions didn't _actually_ do that but they also implied that they did in the UI) and then install on the LUKS'd LVM how you will (with /boot outside it of course - for me it was on a separate unencrypted small sw-RAID-1, because it gives redundancy and grub can still kinda read it even if it'll only see one of the drives)

Should note the lack of /etc/crypttab on the installed filesystem. I'm not actually sure if the initrd wouldn't correctly set up the "partition" within the LUKS volume if you manage to create it with the correct crypttab (though I find it extremely counterintuitive that the installer would anyway force the creation of such - but hey, if the initrd would work, at least it wouldn't really be a major bug in itself).

[Mikko Rauhala (mjr-iki)]

Oh yeah, and the RAID part as such didn't seem to be much of a problem really; I think the LUKS "partition" creation and lack of crypttab for the LUKS initiation on the initrd are the major problems here. I presume LVM would be initialized fine also if the intermediate steps went well. (It did for me in 8.04 when I just fixed the crypttab - when the installer didn't force "partitioning" of the LUKS volume.)

[Antti Kaijanmäki (kaijanmaki)]

Mikko: could you boot karmic live-CD and check the output of

    $ sudo blkid -p /dev/XXX

where XXX is your encrypted partition.

I just want to make sure this is not a duplicate of bug #362315 or bug #428435. Thanks!

[Antti Kaijanmäki (kaijanmaki)]

on jaunty the output of the following will also be useful:

   $ sudo vol_id --probe-all /dev/XXX