Binary package hint: debian-installer
With my current setup, I like to have two separate installations of Ubuntu (the stable release and current development version), which I share everything but the root system for. In other words, I have two separate / installations, but my partitions for /home, /boot, /var, /tmp, and swap are all shared (mounted in both).
During the installation process, I chose to make encrypted volumes for /home and swap, with the new installer encryption options in Gutsy (alternate CD). When I went to install the second time (for what will become my Hardy system), it forced me to re-create the filesystem on those, overwriting the data from the first installation.
While this is not a problem at this time, since I was installing identical Gutsy systems on a clean hard drive, it will prevent things such as testing Hardy alpha release installers, as doing so would wipe the data from my /home partition.
Instead, debian-installer should have the ability to mount existing encrypted volume partitions in the same way that it does for unencrypted ones. The "Configure encrypted volumes" menus should have the "Format it / Keep existing data" choice as normal partitions do.
This bug just bit me too.
- Had an Xubuntu 8.04 instance loaded off the alternate CD and created /boot and the rest as an encrypted volume. That volume was used for LVM, which contained all the partitions for my system.
- Upgrade 8.04 to 8.10
- Want to upgrade to 9.04. Decide to do a fresh reload of Ubuntu 9.04.
- Partitioner sees /boot, but doesn't recognize that there is an encrypted filesystem there. I had to manually mark that it was an ecrypted filesystem, but that apparently causes it to kill the encrypted partition and recreate it (or rewrite the crypto headers, or something).