Arch Linux

Xi0N

Member

From: Bilbao - Spain

Registered: 2007-11-29

Posts: 832

Website

Trouble with LUKS on pendrive installed Arch

I like taking my system with myself when I'm on long trips.
For that purpose, I prepared a system on a 64 gb kingston memory.
I followed all the instructions, and basically what I did is:

1Gb ext4 boot partition
15Gb luks - ext4 root partition
45Gb luks - ext4 home partition

I use syslinux, and configured it so the partition is referenced by uuid, since it will boot on many different machines and the partition names will vary from one computer to another.
Now, the problem is I boot without problem 1 time in five.
Sometimes, upon syslinux starting to boot, before I'm prompted for the password of the root partition, I get a message like "waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/xxxxxxxxx", then, after some seconds, another message follows: "waiting 10 seconds for device dev/mapper/root", then after those ten seconds, I get the typical message that the system could not be booted and that I'm getting left on my own...

Press the power button, boot up again, until it just asks for the password instead of bailing out on me....

Now, I have this very same setup on my laptop, and in the past, i can recall I had the same issue and got it fixed by referencing the partition as /dev/sdX instead of by uuid on sslinux config, but I can't do so this time for the reasons I mentioned before.
Referencing the partition by label is impossible either since encrypted partitions lack label. So, what are my options here?

Cheers

Xi0N

Member

From: Bilbao - Spain

Registered: 2007-11-29

Posts: 832

Website

Re: Trouble with LUKS on pendrive installed Arch

If you want my opinion, I think this has something to do with how the devices are detected upon startup.
I'm having some similar issues on a normal, non-LUKS system, where sometimes /dev/sdX is detected and sometimes, it isn't, at bootup, I mean... any ideas?

Thanks!!

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: Trouble with LUKS on pendrive installed Arch

Did you try booting with the fallback image? It might be that some driver is missing in some machines.

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R00KIE
Tm90aGluZyB0byBzZWUgaGVyZSwgbW92ZSBhbG9uZy4K

nagaseiori

Member

Registered: 2012-09-22

Posts: 72

Re: Trouble with LUKS on pendrive installed Arch

Similar problems here with a 32GB Patriot USB drive. I've found that if you unplug your drive while it's in initramfs (waiting for /dev/sdXwhatever) and plug it back in it is more reliable (as long as you do it quickly enough).