slny
September 12th, 2010, 04:37 PM
Summary: alternate install CD wrote grub to boot sector without asking during attempt to install Ubuntu to an encrypted LVM partition on a dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 setup
I had a disk with Windows 7 on it with two partitions, a 100mb windows recovery partition and another with 200gb or so for Windows (out of a total 500gb drive). I did a system partition encryption using Truecypt 7.0 (not full disk since I wanted to put Linux on the machine as well as a dual boot configuration).
This worked fine.
I then attemped to install an encrypted Ubuntu 10.04 installation using the alternate installer CD. I created a regular ext4 /boot partition and then another encrypted LVM to house root and swap. I then saved the partition changes. After this, I quit and tried to boot into Windows first before continuing the Linux install to make sure it was still good.
Unfortunately, it failed to boot. The Truecrypt bootloader loaded fine and after I entered my passphrase, I got the grub rescue prompt and some error saying no bootable partition found.
It seems that grub installed itself even though I didn't get to the part of the install where it asked where to install it. Also, if grub wanted to install itself to someplace other than boot, wouldn't it have installed itself to the MBR? Apparently it didn't otherwise the Truecrypt bootloader wouldn't have come up. Where exactly did grub install itself? Is it the boot sector of the Windows partition? If so, why did it do this?
I'm currently decrypting the drive using the Truecrypt recovery CD and hope to be able to recover.
Any insight is appreciated.
Thanks.
I had a disk with Windows 7 on it with two partitions, a 100mb windows recovery partition and another with 200gb or so for Windows (out of a total 500gb drive). I did a system partition encryption using Truecypt 7.0 (not full disk since I wanted to put Linux on the machine as well as a dual boot configuration).
This worked fine.
I then attemped to install an encrypted Ubuntu 10.04 installation using the alternate installer CD. I created a regular ext4 /boot partition and then another encrypted LVM to house root and swap. I then saved the partition changes. After this, I quit and tried to boot into Windows first before continuing the Linux install to make sure it was still good.
Unfortunately, it failed to boot. The Truecrypt bootloader loaded fine and after I entered my passphrase, I got the grub rescue prompt and some error saying no bootable partition found.
It seems that grub installed itself even though I didn't get to the part of the install where it asked where to install it. Also, if grub wanted to install itself to someplace other than boot, wouldn't it have installed itself to the MBR? Apparently it didn't otherwise the Truecrypt bootloader wouldn't have come up. Where exactly did grub install itself? Is it the boot sector of the Windows partition? If so, why did it do this?
I'm currently decrypting the drive using the Truecrypt recovery CD and hope to be able to recover.
Any insight is appreciated.
Thanks.