Arch Linux

DerJudge

Member

From: NRW, Germany

Registered: 2013-03-26

Posts: 24

Website

Issues on first boot - USB Key, Encrypted

Hi everyone,

I just tried to install a USB stick with Arch Linux, using an encrypted partition as root partition (dm-crypt w. LUKS). I followed the guides in the wiki and could not identify any unclear pitfalls or such - everything felt smooth, but when I try to boot, I faced an issue:

GRUB showed up fine, followed by "starting version 237" (which is from systemd, AFAIK), but then, unfortunately, the next thing displayed is "ERROR: device UUID=... not found". There was no password prompt so far.
The UUID that is show is the one of the decrypted device, not the one of the encrypted physical disk.

I just do not know what I did wrong:
In mkinitcpio.conf, I changed HOOKS to be:

HOOKS=(base udev autodetect keyboard keymap consolefont modconf block encrypt lvm2 filesystems fsck) 

mkinitcpio doesn't report any errors while generating the image.
In /etc/default/grub, I set "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX" to be:

cryptdevice=UUID=d4995cc6-c01d-45aa-b843-e8a5ae97480e:cryptroot

That's the UUID of the encrypted partition.
I also uncommented the line defining "GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y".
Generating the grub config also works like a charm, resulting in the following kernel line:

linux /vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=ea057566-3f14-4262-9245-56bfca9986d3 rw cryptdevice=UUID=d4995cc6-c01d-45aa-b843-e8a5ae97480e:cryptroot quiet

To me, all looks good - why am I not prompted for a passphrase during boot?

frostschutz

Member

Registered: 2013-11-15

Posts: 1,416

Re: Issues on first boot - USB Key, Encrypted

Does the initramfs drop you in a rescue shell?

In that shell you could 'cat /proc/partitions' to see a list of detected devices. If your USB stick is not in there, then your initramfs is lacking the relevant kernel modules for USB mass storage.

In that case the fallback image might work, and you can add modules to be always included to your mkinitcpio.conf

Tarqi

Member

From: Ixtlan

Registered: 2012-11-27

Posts: 179

Website

Re: Issues on first boot - USB Key, Encrypted

Use root=/dev/mapper/cryptroot in your boot configuration.

Edit: Please ignore, misunderstood the problem.

Last edited by Tarqi (2018-03-07 00:09:58)

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Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment. ~Lao Tse

DerJudge

Member

From: NRW, Germany

Registered: 2013-03-26

Posts: 24

Website

Re: Issues on first boot - USB Key, Encrypted

Does the initramfs drop you in a rescue shell?

In that shell you could 'cat /proc/partitions' to see a list of detected devices. If your USB stick is not in there, then your initramfs is lacking the relevant kernel modules for USB mass storage.

In that case the fallback image might work, and you can add modules to be always included to your mkinitcpio.conf

Hey, great, thanks for the hint!
Indeed, I had to add "usb_storage" to the list of modules in mkinitcpio's config.