Hello slitaz forum! I'm new to SliTaz, and my nerd skills are quite modest,
but of course i try to do everything the most complicated way :)
So, i'm trying to do this:
Install SliTaz to HDD with my root partition encrypted (i'm installing from a Slitaz liveUSB). I've been searching the internet for information, but specifically for SliTaz i've only found this: http://doc.slitaz.org/en:guides:uncommoninst#crypto-install
and it is, well, a quite 'concise' guide :)
But i've tried to do my homework and then try out this guide, but i haven't got it working yet. I manage to create the encrypted partition, format & mount it, and copy the rootfs.gz archive to it (from a loop-mounted iso file), and then i'm able to see the contents of the installed rootfs on the partition. But,
- i haven't been able to get the boot setup working despite lots of research and experimenting, and,
- if i shutdown/reboot the liveUSB, i can't find or open the encrypted partition again.
So, before i start asking for help with my setup specifically, i'd be happy for some general info about the above-mentioned guide so that i can try to sort it out myself:
- the mountbox 'crypto button': what does it do? How does it work more specifically? I.e., what would be the process for doing the same thing manually?
- is there some essential step that is left out of this guide because it 'should be obvious'?
- On the top of the 'Unusual install methods' page it says that, "The following configurations are using the SliTaz 4.0 boot loader grub4dos-linux": what is this? How is it different from 'normal' Grub4dos - or is it some kind of modified version of Grub legacy?
So far i've been trying to get the boot setup working with both 'normal' Grub4dos and with Grub legacy with no success*, so i suppose the next thing to do is to install this grub4dos-linux package to my boot partition and try to find out how it's supposed to work, but i'd be happy to get some kind of introduction to it first. Also, it seems to me that the problem would be somewhere else, because i'm not able to decrypt/mount/open the partition through my liveUSB.
- which brings me to my obvious next question: how do you decrypt/mount/open an encrypted device previously created with mountbox?
Mountbox doesn't seem to have a function for this, and using cryptsetup in a terminal doesn't work (Error message says that the partition "is not a valid LUKS device").
- also, if someone has tried out alternative methods for installing SliTaz with encrypted root partition, i'd be very happy to hear of them. I suppose that one option for me is to do: more homework on cryptsetup/LUKS and do it all 'from scratch', but in that case i wonder if there's something specific that should be taken into account with SliTaz - it's a bit different than most other distros anyway.
I really like SliTaz so i'd really like to get this to work! Thanks for creating the coolest distro around!
-wolfpup
* I just get various errors when choosing to boot the menu entry for the encrypted partition, and then either the bootloader hangs, or i'm returned to the menu interface. With the menu.lst entry described in the guide, i get "Error 62: Number of heads must be specified etc etc", and when i modify it to
title Slitaz 4.0 blah blah
find --set-root /boot/slitaz-preinit.iso
map --mem --heads=0 --sectors-per-track=0 /boot/slitaz-preinit.iso (hd1)
map --hook
root (hd1)
kernel <etc etc>i get "Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition". I've also tried changing (hd1) to (hd32) or (0xff), but same problem.
