Calamares/Kubuntu 24.04: Can't create encrypted LVM

[Hadmut Danisch]

Hi,

I was just trying to install Kubuntu 24.04 (which comes with Calamares) on a Notebook with a brand new 1TB nvme SSD (all zeroed out).

Choosing the automatic/guided installation works well, including the choice for encrypting the disk. But then, the whole disk is one ext4 partition, which doesn't work well with some applications (e.g. some operations of LXD are extremely slow on ext4), and for some reasons I do need ZFS on a partition of the disk.

I therefore chose manual partition, and created

- GPT partition table
- 300 MB FAT32, marked as bootable and mounted to /boot/efi (Calamares does not offer an EFI flag)
- 4GiB ext4, mounted to /boot
- Rest of the disk: LUKS2

And then there is no option to put any kind of partition into the luks partition.

You can't press "Next" either.

The only option is to create a new volume group (what I wanted to do anyways). But there, no physical volume is available to put the volume group in.

Calamares does not seem to recognize LUKS2 to contain a new partition inside. It does not even ask for a password, and it looks as if luks is just a menu entry that has never been implemented.

So it is actually not possible to partition the machine in the way I need it (encrypted LVM, one lv ext4 for the OS, one lv for ZFS)

Not really good for an LTS release.

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Likely duplicate (or related) to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/calamares/+bug/1900266

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Hadmut Danisch (hadmut)]

This bug is only related to #1900266, but not identical, because #1900266 is about LVM, while this bug is a bout LUKS partitions. The problem is, that creating an ecrypted LUKS partition does not – as it should and as former versions of ubuntu installation media did – add the plaintext contents as a virtual device.

If you create an ecrypted partition, e.g. in /dev/sda3, this partition is occupied, but in return, it must offer a new partition for further use, i.e. the plaintext mapper device which is "inside" the encrypted partition. This is, what is missing here.

So, while both bugs are closeley related and should be fixed together, they are definitely different, distinct bugs. This one is about LUKS, the other is about LVM.

(And, btw., the support for efi partitions in the manual partitioning should be improved.)