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Debian - Installation questions

C

corinthos

Golden Member
When installing Debian (etch or lenny) you can install using lvm and dm-crypt, and have the option of installing various directories on separate partitions.

My questions are:

1. is there a way to specify the size of / partition during this install when booting into the
installation cd? or do i need to do a manual setup of lvm/dm-crypt before/during setup?
if so, how do i do it manually before/during install?

2. is there a way to skip the step where setup erases the hdd (fills with random data)
prior to installation? i've already done this before in a previous install and don't want
to do it again.


As a related aside:

1. i deleted /var/log/*.log files and wonder if they will all be regenerated and if
it does any harm to do that.. (i wanted to clear out some hdd space).

Thanks!

 
The partitioning part of the Debian installer is probably the most confusing and wanting to use LVM and encryption make it just that much worse. What you probably want to do is create 2 partitions, one for /boot and one for LVM. After you do that it'll let you configure LVM, create any volumes that you want and then you should be able to use the dm-crypt stuff to encrypt the individual LVM volumes.

AFAIK it doesn't fill any volumes with random data, it creates a filesystem with mkfs but that's it.
 
Ubuntu is a little more straight forward with using encryption on their alt install disk. I know it is the same installer as debian but it automagically takes care of it for the most part. But if you want to control the partitions sizes you are still in the same boat. In the partition manager make a small partition for boot then make a partition for everything else and select physical volume for encryption (I think), next you select configure encrypted volumes and answer the questions there.

Now that you have gotten this far, you will see an encrypted volume with a type ext3 usually, you want to change that to LVM, then go to configure logical volume manager and make as many volumes as you want (/, /var/log, /home , swap, etc). Make sure you put a swap in there, it's the only safe place (or you can use a swap file if you decide). Then you are good to go.
 
Ubuntu is a little more straight forward with using encryption on their alt install disk. I know it is the same installer as debian but it automagically takes care of it for the most part.
Click to expand...

Debian has the guided, "automagic" setup method as well.

2. is there a way to skip the step where setup erases the hdd (fills with random data)
prior to installation? i've already done this before in a previous install and don't want
to do it again.
Click to expand...

Turns out it does, it's been a while since I set that up and forgot about that. But if you setup the encrypted volumes manually you have the option to disable the erasure.
 
Cool, I have never setup debian that way. I just assumed being debian that things would be less streamlined.
 
Cool, I have never setup debian that way. I just assumed being debian that things would be less streamlined.
Click to expand...

Debian's old installer was pretty bad but other than the fact that the new one defaults to ncurses for compatibility it's decent.
 
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