John Wiersba
January 10th, 2009, 12:46 AM
I'm planning ahead for easy upgrades on my laptop. One of my goals is to have a simple configuration which allows for testing of the next release. Also, I want my hard disk encrypted for security.
Here's what I've done so far and my reasoning. Can anyone comment on the viability of this plan or offer suggestions for a better configuration?
I installed my laptop from the 8.10 alternate CD, creating two physical partitions: boot + an encrypted partition with LVM inside containing 4 logical partitions: /, home, swap, and a spare-/.
I used this configuration because I intend to be able to do the following major administration tasks:
Normal operation: Cold boot, prompt for passphrase/USBkey, then automatically log into my user account with everything unlocked (including wireless keychain). That is, I want to enter credentials only once (at the post-grub prompt for unlocking my encrypted partition).
Boot from Live Desktop CD, load modules, etc., and use it as a rescue CD where I can still access the logical LVM partitions described above.
Create a Live Rescue CD which includes all the prerequisites for doing #2 already on the CD (so I don't need a network).
My plan for upgrading to a the next Ubuntu release is to do a fresh install instead of an upgrade. For this I will want to install the new version of Ubuntu (Jaunty) in the spare-/ logical partition I've set aside above, in order to try Jaunty out. To do that I will need to be able to install into an already existing logical partition inside an encrypted partition. After installation, I will need to be able to switch at boot time (from the grub menu) to either the old / partition (8.10) or the new / partition (9.4) at will. The old / will mount my home partition on /home, but the new / will not (it will be self-contained within one partition). Once I'm confident that everything is working in the Jaunty install, I will shuffle things around a bit and then mount my home partition onto /home in the Jaunty partition and make that my default.
Here's what I've done so far and my reasoning. Can anyone comment on the viability of this plan or offer suggestions for a better configuration?
I installed my laptop from the 8.10 alternate CD, creating two physical partitions: boot + an encrypted partition with LVM inside containing 4 logical partitions: /, home, swap, and a spare-/.
I used this configuration because I intend to be able to do the following major administration tasks:
Normal operation: Cold boot, prompt for passphrase/USBkey, then automatically log into my user account with everything unlocked (including wireless keychain). That is, I want to enter credentials only once (at the post-grub prompt for unlocking my encrypted partition).
Boot from Live Desktop CD, load modules, etc., and use it as a rescue CD where I can still access the logical LVM partitions described above.
Create a Live Rescue CD which includes all the prerequisites for doing #2 already on the CD (so I don't need a network).
My plan for upgrading to a the next Ubuntu release is to do a fresh install instead of an upgrade. For this I will want to install the new version of Ubuntu (Jaunty) in the spare-/ logical partition I've set aside above, in order to try Jaunty out. To do that I will need to be able to install into an already existing logical partition inside an encrypted partition. After installation, I will need to be able to switch at boot time (from the grub menu) to either the old / partition (8.10) or the new / partition (9.4) at will. The old / will mount my home partition on /home, but the new / will not (it will be self-contained within one partition). Once I'm confident that everything is working in the Jaunty install, I will shuffle things around a bit and then mount my home partition onto /home in the Jaunty partition and make that my default.