Hi there!
After my NVIDIA card died I decided it was time to buy an AMD card again (R9 270X), but I didn't think AMD drivers were such a pain in Linux as people said. Of course, in some distros anyway. On Arch, for example, there's no official release because Arch's developers would have to hold Xorg in order to make a closed-source driver available, because AMD's pace isn't in pair with Linux. So in order to install AMD's drivers on Arch I must rely on some guy's unnoficial repositories, but that isn't the whole problem. Even though I'm cool with adding repos and downgrading Xorg, I'm not cool with it not working for a lot of apps, so that's where I decided to try a few distros. Manjaro is a no-go because it installs Flash as default. openSUSE although is a very good distro, is a complete mess when it comes to repositories, specially multimedia ones. Ubuntu/Mint are also a no-go, Ubuntu because after 12.04 they have a spyware by default, and Mint because it contains non-free stuff by default.
So here I come! I ran Debian in the past for a long time (aside from a breaf period last year) and it was lovely, I could easily set up a custom encrypted install, but now I don't remember how to, and it's killing me. I don't like how the installer doesn't show the partitions size as they actually are, and I don't like how the automated encrypted LVM setup doesn't let me chose the encryption algorithm or the timeframe between each passphrase attempt. That's why I must create my install, and here's what I used to do on Arch (the part that really matters), converted to what I use on Debian:
Code:
# modprobe dm-mod
(create one 1GB partition for /boot, unencrypted ; create another big 930 GB formatted as "8e" - LVM - on dev/sda2)
Code:
# fdisk /dev/sda
(chose my ciphers and iter time)
Code:
# cryptsetup -c twofish-xts-plain64 -y-s 512 --iter-time 5000 luksFormat /dev/sda2
(open the luks container on "sda2_crypt")
Code:
# cryptsetup open --type luks /dev/sda2 sda2_crypt
(create physical volume on sda2_crypt)
Code:
# pvcreate /dev/mapper/sda2_crypt
(create volume group "debian" on sda2_crypt)
Code:
# vgcreate debian /dev/mapper/sda2_crypt
(create volumes)
Code:
# lvcreate -L 8G system -n root
# lvcreate -L 60G system -n swap
# lvcreate -l 100%FREE system -n home
After this is done, I go to the "partition disks" page where I select each partition/volume to it's correct destination. I then procceed to installing the base system, configuring apt, and all that. Now, before I install Grub I used to execute the following commands on shell:
Code:
# nano /etc/crypttab
I used to put something there, but I don't remember what exactly. It's been a long time since I used Debian for long! But here's what I put the
Code:
sda2_crypt /dev/mapper/sda2_crypt none luks
Then I procceeded to instal syslinux (I REALLY don't like GRUB)
Code:
# chroot /target
# apt-get install syslinux
But I get the following error:
Quote:
E: cannot write log (Is /dev/pts mounted?) - posix_openpt (2: No such file or directory).
I'm assuming this is just a non-critical error. But this is not the problem, the problem is when I try to install syslinux:
Code:
# syslinux-install_update -i -a -m
The output:
Quote:
/bin/sh: 2: syslinux-install_update: not found
Then I type "syslinux --help":
Code:
# syslinux -h
Quote:
Usage: syslinux [options] device
--offset -t Offset of the file system on the device
--directory -d Directory for the installation target
--install -i Install over the corrent bootsector
--update -U Update a previous installation
--zip -z Force zipdrive geometry (-H 64 -S 32)
--sectors=# -S Force the number of sectors per track
--heads=# -H Force number of heads
--stupid -s Slow, safe and stupid mode
--raid -r Fall back to the next device on boot failure
--once=... Execute a command once upon boot
--clear-once -O Clear the boot-once command
--reset-adv Reset auxilliary data
--menu-save= -M Set the label to select as default on next boot
--force -f Ignore precautions
I tried literaly every possible combination that would make sense in Arch and yet I can't install it. The Debian documentation on syslinux doesn't help at all, and the Arch's Wiki on Syslinux... well, tells how to make it work on Arch It used to work the same way on Debian, but now it doesn't.
Here's a little list of the errors I get:
Code:
# syslinux -i -U
Quote:
Usage: syslinux [options] device
--offset -t Offset of the file system on the device
--directory -d Directory for the installation target
--install -i Install over the corrent bootsector
--update -U Update a previous installation
--zip -z Force zipdrive geometry (-H 64 -S 32)
--sectors=# -S Force the number of sectors per track
--heads=# -H Force number of heads
--stupid -s Slow, safe and stupid mode
--raid -r Fall back to the next device on boot failure
--once=... Execute a command once upon boot
--clear-once -O Clear the boot-once command
--reset-adv Reset auxilliary data
--menu-save= -M Set the label to select as default on next boot
--force -f Ignore precautions
Code:
#syslinux --install --update
Quote:
Usage: syslinux [options] device
--offset -t Offset of the file system on the device
--directory -d Directory for the installation target
--install -i Install over the corrent bootsector
--update -U Update a previous installation
--zip -z Force zipdrive geometry (-H 64 -S 32)
--sectors=# -S Force the number of sectors per track
--heads=# -H Force number of heads
--stupid -s Slow, safe and stupid mode
--raid -r Fall back to the next device on boot failure
--once=... Execute a command once upon boot
--clear-once -O Clear the boot-once command
--reset-adv Reset auxilliary data
--menu-save= -M Set the label to select as default on next boot
--force -f Ignore precautions
Code:
# syslinux --install --update -i -a -m
Quote:
Usage: syslinux [options] device
--offset -t Offset of the file system on the device
--directory -d Directory for the installation target
--install -i Install over the corrent bootsector
--update -U Update a previous installation
--zip -z Force zipdrive geometry (-H 64 -S 32)
--sectors=# -S Force the number of sectors per track
--heads=# -H Force number of heads
--stupid -s Slow, safe and stupid mode
--raid -r Fall back to the next device on boot failure
--once=... Execute a command once upon boot
--clear-once -O Clear the boot-once command
--reset-adv Reset auxilliary data
--menu-save= -M Set the label to select as default on next boot
--force -f Ignore precautions
Oh, and also users are still not able to press TAB to get the full command without typing it? And we can't even press the up arrow key that we get "^[[A"? :P Whaat?
What am I doing wrong?
I'm really not with the time to mess with these kinds of things, so either I figure this out REAL SOON or I'll be forced to get back to Windows