This HOWTO is for people who have encrypted their main volumes of their hard drives using the method offered by the Alternate CD installer. IT will probably work on other ways of installation.

1. Boot into a Live CD environment (the other OS is imposable to boot to right?) and open up a terminal window. (applications<accessories<terminal)

2. Install needed packages:
Code:
sudo apt-get install lvm2 cryptsetup
3. probe needed module:
Code:
sudo modprobe dm-crypt
4. setup the crypto module to recognise the partition
Code:
sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/hda5 crypt1
Enter your passphrase. You should get the following message:
key slot 0 unlocked.
Command successful.
If not, something has gone wrong.
5. scan for volume groups
Code:
sudo vgscan --mknodes
sudo vgchange -ay
REMEMBER the name of the volume group, as you will need it for step 7.
6. Create a mount point:
Code:
sudo mkdir /volume
7. mount the encrypted volume to the mountpoint you just created. (replace paulb-desktop with the name of the volume group found in step 5.)
Code:
sudo mount /dev/paulb-desktop/root /volume
8. The volume is mounted, now you can chroot or whatever else you need to do. If you would like to open the gnome file manager for writing to it issue the following command:
Code:
sudo nautilus /volume
9. Happy Crypting.