Ubuntu Installation :: Partitioning - Triple Boot With Full Disk Encryption ?
Mar 28, 2011
To structure the layout of my partitions. I'm installing Windows 7, Backtrack 4 R2 and Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop on my laptop. I've got a 500 GB HDD named sda.
I've already installed Windows 7. It's my opinion that it's easiest to begin with Windows.
The partitions look like this right now:
The Windows installation is unencrypted and I want it to stay that way. It's only there in case my laptop gets stolen, I've installed various nasty things there.
The Backtrack 4 installation will also be given 100 GB space, I want it to be encrypted. The Ubuntu installation should get the rest of all the remaining space and preferably be encrypted but it's not 100% necessary.
How I should partition this? There's a limit on 4 primary partitions? How do I circumvent this? There should be one dedicated GRUB partition which will point to each of the installations own boot loaders?
I've been wanting to do this for a while and after upgrading some of my pc components I decided I would finally try to dual boot with full disk encryption on both windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10. I managed to encrypt the windows drive with truecrypt and that worked. I installed Ubuntu 9.10 using the alternate cd and everything but /boot is in an encrypted LVM. Each OS is on a separate SATA drive the windows is on sda1 and ubuntu /boot is sdb1.
To setup the dual boot I started out following the tutorial [url] but its for XP and versions of ubuntu that use grub not grub 2. I ran dd as posted and saved the files it produced from truecrypt. I then ran into some problems with grub reinstallation so I simply reinstalled Ubuntu 9.10 from scratch again. This put grub 2 on the computer. I've managed to get it to add a Windows 7 option.
However, when the option is selected truecrypt comes up and says that the bootloader is corrupted and that I need to use the repair CD I burned before I encrypted the drive. My question is does anyone have any experience dual booting using Truecrypt on Windows 7 and LUKS/dm-crypt on Ubuntu 9.10 with grub 2? And how would I get the boot menu to work? I'd rather not reinstall but if I have to I have images from right before I encrypted so it wouldn't be the end of the world.
I managed to get a cheap refurbed netbook recently (Samsung N150) and I'm wanting to put Ubuntu on it. As it's also likely to be used when travelling and have things like chat logs, photos, and other such things I'd like to do full disk encryption. Also I've been pointed towards 10.4 as apparently the 10.10 netbook desktop isn't to everyone's taste.
So I tried using unetbootin to make a bootable 10.4.1 i386 Alternate usb stick, which hit the problem of no cd drive. I found an item to add to the boot (cdrom-detect/try-usb=true) which got it a little further, but at a copying stage it threw an error saying it couldn't copy off the disc.
Finally I tried making a unetbootin of the mini iso (does mini even support full disk encryption?) but that seems to hang after selecting a mirror.
EDIT: Well it seems I was just impatient on the mini ISO and after a few minutes it's gone onto time-zone, though of course this could get rather tiresome without a local mirror, especially given this may go through more than one iteration.
I would like to configure my Debian Jessie system in this way.
Two partitions:
1) /boot on /dev/sda1 2) everything else on /dev/sda2
I want to encrypt the second partition with LUKS. And then install over it a LVM volume. Inside the LVM volume i will create the / (root), /var, /opt and /home virtual partitions. In this way, i'll get asked only once for the password to decrypt all partitions. Because if i don't use LVM, then i'll get asked for the password for each encrypted partition.
I can follow and understand almost everything of this HOW-TO for Archlinux: [URL] ....
Only two passages are unclear to me:
1) Configuring mkinitcpio
I don't understand what i should do here in order to complete this. What should i do in Debian to configure "mkinitcpio"? what is the equivalent thing to do here?
I thought that the kernel would automatically recompile itself with all installed modules on the Debian system, once cryptosetup/LUKS or LVM2 get installed.
2) Configuring the boot loader
I don't understand what should i write in /etc/default/grub. Will GRUB automatically load the LUKS and LVM2 modules? Also, I don't think that i could boot the system in this way:
create a partition seperate from my home directory out of it. i have a 500 gig hard drive and i wish to create a 70 gig partition on it on install i used entire disk is there any way to make a partition after this for i do not want to reinstall.
I pretty much know nothing at all about partitioning hard-drives and unspeakably less about linux as a whole. but i really want to get into it. (The HP Mini 311 is what i am using)
Okay so a couple of days ago (before i had ever heard of Ubuntu, or even thought i could ever use Linux based software). I had been Dual-Booting OSX Snow Leopard and Windows 7, while using Chameleon boot-loader, on my HP Mini 311. Even though my sound-card and network adapter do not work while running Snow Leopard.
I followed this guide for dualboot: [url]
So i heard about the new Linux Os Ubuntu, and after trying it for about 3min on a USB i was sold. So i began to make my HP a triple-boot now with OSX Snow Leo, Windows 7, and Ubuntu.
I did this by recreating the same dual-boot system as before, but this time saving room for Ubuntu to be installed to my hard drive, after SnowLeo and Win7. I got this to work perfectly by creating a 4th partition for Ubuntu and a 5th for swap area.
Here is where my problem lies... I saw this tutorial for dual-booting Win7 and Ubuntu, while making another partition so that windows and ubuntu can share the same files.
Here:[url]
Once i tried doing this on my triple-boot(adding ubuntu partition, swap partition, and a "storage" partition, on top of the 3 partitions i created during dual-boot setup) My Windows 7 stopped booting. I read somewhere that hdds can only have like 3 primary partitions, which is the only kind of partition i know how to use. so i was thinking maybe i could put this storage partition in another mount location, such as /home or /usr, because i think the added partitions is what messed up my Windows 7 boot. My only problem is i have no idea what different mount positions are used for, nor how to use them properly.
I have a bunch of pictures that I thought I had backed up but as it turns out I didn't, the problem is I formatted the drive they were on.
It is a 1TB hard drive, and it was running Ubuntu 10.10 using full disk encryption from the alternate install CD. After formatting, I installed Ubuntu Server 10.10, also using full disk encryption.
I know the encryption key for both installs (and the keys in fact are the same).
I have turned off the machine, and have stopped writing to the disk. I am hoping because it is a 1TB drive, and I have only written over it with 2GB of data, that there is a chance I can recover the data.
Is there a way to install ubuntu 10.04 or 10.10 with full disk encryption? I read how to do it in the 8.0 version, was wondering if it is still possible?
The only reason why I don't use Linux (even though I prefer Linux over Windows, and can do everything faster and more efficiently) is because each time I try to learn about dm-crypt I give up.
Can someone point me in the right direction for full OTFE on Linux (like TrueCrypt)?
I do know about cold boot attacks. But I ran across a couple of posts/websites that had me wonder if it is possible, without the passphrase, to just remove the encryption?
this isn't really a security question, per se, so feel free to move. It is related to full disk LVM encryption though. Full disk didn't work for me with grub2 after running dd to a remote server, so I downgraded to grub1. No biggie. However, I have neither grub or grub2 as selected in Synaptic.Let's say I forget which I have installed. How would I determine what version of grub is installed at the moment. I'm assuming it's somehow installed on in the mbr but not on the OS. I didn't mean to do anything funky. Is that the normal setup? I'm deploying these systems to users and want to be able to troubleshoot issues in the future (hopefully that will not be needed!) grub --version does not work because it is not installed.
With all the talk about disk encryption for Apple devices, I wanted to ask about how full disk encryption compares between debian linux and mac OS X. Is the code for debian linux fully available for people to inspect for flaws or backdoors? Apparently although part of the encryption code is available for OS X the full code for Filevault 2 is not public. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each method of encryption for each operating system?
I am investigating full disk encryption and have made a DD copy of the hard drive which has been encrypted, this DD file is stored on my computer for analysis.
First question is - Anyone know how i can access data in this DD file even though its been encrypted?
Second question - Is there a DD command where i can image the systems memory? I ask this because when a system is turned on, to get past the pre-boot authentication stage you need a password. From what i understand, this password will be passed in to ram when power is applied to the system. Making a copy of the memory will also copy the password?
I meet a problem about "Your boot partition is on a disk using the GPT partitioning Scheme but this machines cannot boot using GPT." in installation. Does GRUB-0.97 on CentOS 5.4 support GPT?
When you paratition the disk on windows, it leaves all your documents on it, right?
There, there's 49% left. IF I set Ubuntu to 48% of the disk, would it destroy the files that are on the right 48% of the disk? Or, does it not matter if you defragment
That's not my hard drive deframenting, it's just one I found on the web. It's rather small at 4 GB.
This has now happened with 3 computers. I boot the i386 iso on a usb stick and I enter my name fine and create an account with a password, and then after the time is checked, the installation gets halfway through the hard disk bar and then suddenly it freezes. Sorry if i'm a little unspecific, I've forgotten what the name of the process was exactly and I don't want to have to try again if unnecessary.
I want to create several virtual machines based on a minimal (no GUI) Ubuntu installation. I'm using VirtualBox (on Windows 7), the VMs are being created with 256MB RAM and using the Ubuntu Minimal CD Image [URL]. Because I want 4-5 of these virtual machines I want to use minimal disk space for storage too, which means restricting the virtual hard disk size for each. My first attempt was to limit it to 300MB, but when I got to the partitioning section of the installer it would not allow me to do automatic partitioning and forced me to do manual partitioning, it did moan about the size of the disk.
So I started again with a 1GB virtual hard disk, this time the installer was quite happy to do the automatic partitioning. My question is how small can I make my virtual hard disk without having to do manual partitioning? I don't have a problem with doing the partitioning manually but for easiness I just want to do it automatically and find it strange the acceptable size isn't mentioned anywhere (that I could find).
Just bought a new computer that I will use as server: Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H motherboard AMD Phenon II 1090T 16 Gb RAM 4 x Seagate 2Tb hard disks
I tried to install Ubuntu server 10.04 and 10.10, both 64 bit, having similar results. Also I have tried enabling and disabling the RAID card. On 10.04 installer hangs preparing disk partitioning phase at 43%, on 10.10 hangs at the same stage 45%. Must I download something and apply before that phase?
Trying to encrypt my partitions for swap, root and /home directories. However, when I go to partitioner and select the drives as sdb1, sbd2 or sbd3 and click on the encryption. It errors with a -3016 error. Can't find anything in the release notes or the security documentation that would lead me to why this screen is popping.
I have a Computer, It came with Windows 7 64bit on it. I installed Ubuntu through WUBI. I used the Windows Disk Management program to resize my HDD. I shrunk the main drive and created a 20 gig free space. I installed WindowsXP on this 20g space. I had to change from AHCI to ATA. I started my new XP installation. As I should have expected my the screen that let me pick between Windows 7 and Ubuntu was gone, and it just said XP. Well thats cool. I get in XP use bcdeasy and use the install Win7 to mbr. So I restarted. Great I now I have Ubuntu and Win7... but no XP. So i think, okay, ill boot into Ubuntu, use the update grub command and XP will be there, so i do it and restart. No XP, So i try to boot into Win7 and see if i can do something in there.. No luck it says it can't boot and takes me to a startup recovery thing. Which, as Windows recovery things tend to do, doesn't find anything wrong. So I have Ubuntu now, which is great, but I do need Windows.
I'm trying to perform a clean installation of 8.0.0-i386 from a CD. Seven consecutive attempts all result in the same issue: Almost immediately after commiting the disk partitioning settings (i.e., to begin formatting), the computer does a hard restart. I have tried doing the partitioning as early as possible in the installation process, just in case the system is running out of memory; I have also tried using the lowmem option. I suspect the problem may be related to my very old hardware...
Micronics serverboard 440BX chipset* Dual Pentium II 450MHz CPUs* 1GB ECC RAM* Adaptec AHA-2940UW SCSI adapter IBM Ultrastar 36GB UW-SCSI HDD ATAPI CD-ROM Matrox G100 AGP video card* *starred items are all original parts from an Intergraph server with validation/verification stickers attesting to their intercompatibility
No POST errors, the HDD passed verification using the Adaptec ROM utility, all unnecessary hardware removed
Could it be that I need an older release or some custom-compiled kernel? The only thing I could come up with on the web was that a lot of people have a similar failure with modern distros on non-PAE CPUs, but the P-II should not be susceptible to this problem.
I have XP on sda1, Fedora 11 encrypted on sdb 1 (boot) and sdb 2 (root), I would like Ubuntu on sdc 1 (boot) sdc 2 (root). However when I tried to install from the cd the partition manager does not see my Fedora as an OS (I assume because it is encrypted). So my question is how can I achieve my triple boot without having to have my Fedora unencrypted. I want it encrypted for a reason.
Also I cancelled the installation for Ubuntu and it reverted to a Live cd and I tried to mount my Fedora encrypted drive. Ubuntu asked for the pass and when I entered it I get an error saying it cannot be mounted because it is not a mountable file system. This is not good for me because I would like to be able to access all my hdd's from both distro's.
I have (only bc i have to) windows vista, also Ubuntu 10.04 on the same drive, and dual-booting is no issue at all. But after I installed Mandriva 2010 to try to triple boot, i couldn't find Ubuntu anymore so I got rid of mandriva, and grub was messed up bc I deleted all mandriva partitions. So then I installed Xubuntu 9.10 (because it is a quick install) to recover grub, and with Xubuntu, Ubuntu, and vista, Grub sees all three OSes no problem. So what would I have to do to make Grub work this way when I install Mandriva?
I want to install a triple boot load consisting of Windows 7, Ubuntu 10.04, and Fedora.My question is, if I install Windows 7, followed by another distro, like Fedora, and then install Ubuntu 10.04, will the Ubuntu GRUB 2 menu display all three options?I know if I install Ubuntu and then install Fedora, I have to go through some heavy gyrations to get everything to show in the load menu, so it seems easier to install Ubuntu last.
Is it possible to encrypt the entire drive and not be prompted for the passphrase?
I have a request for a demo of our application and I am looking to create a virtual for VMware's player but need to make sure that the vmdk file cannot be mounted and files pulled from it to protect us from reverse engineering of the application.
I had Win7 installed on my Laptop and wanted to set up a triple boot with Fedora 12 and Mint 8.So I installed Fedora 12 and it worked loading grub and offering Win7 and Fedora as choices.Then I installed Mint hoping for the Grub2 to recognise Fedora and set up the triple boot but it didn't and I can now only boot into Win7 or Mint.sudo update-grub doesn't help.How can I configure grub2 to offer me all three OSs?
