[Bug 719563] Re: mountall: fatal error: cannot open /dev/mapper/crypthome_unformatted

[Thorsten Kohfeldt]

Steve,

I am willing to accept your reasoning.

I just want to mention that in times where other distributions introduce and advertise systemd,
any "transient" errors, which IMHO make upstart *look* unreliable in comparison,
should be really easy to analyse/track down at least, i.e "clever" diagnostics could be an advantage.

Again, I can only speculate how many guys gave up on using Ubuntu for
reasons like the current problem.


Maybe mentioning something in the manual for fstab is a start:

(Oneiric)
man fstab | grep -B 1 -A 2 UUID | head -5
              Instead of giving the device explicitly, one may indicate the (ext2 or xfs) filesystem that  is  to
              be  mounted by its UUID or volume label (cf.  e2label(8) or xfs_admin(8)), writing LABEL=<label> or
              UUID=<uuid>, e.g., `LABEL=Boot' or `UUID=3e6be9de-8139-11d1-9106-a43f08d823a6'.  This will make the
              system  more  robust:  adding  or  removing  a  SCSI  disk changes the disk device name but not the
              filesystem volume label.

This encourages the use of labels and/or UUIDs without the slightest
hint for possible drawbacks.


BTW,
is there an explicit reason why especially cryptsetup needs to intermediately hide the device which is typically already successfully unencrypted ?
Shouldn't that problem be fixed on a lower level before even the device *node* is created ?
I.e. is the crypt dm layer disclosing the "device data structure to be" too early to the kernel ?
Is udev listening on that device node creation ?
Maybe there could be improved udev rules ?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/719563

Title:
  mountall: fatal error: cannot open /dev/mapper/crypthome_unformatted

Status in “cryptsetup” package in Ubuntu:
  Won't Fix
Status in “mountall” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: mountall

  I have upgraded from Maverick to Natty yesterday, while there are
  still some (apparently irrelevant) packages pending.

  I am using cryptsetup and after entering the passphrase for my crypthome device (where keys for other devices are stored), I am getting a fatal error from mountall (translated from German):
    fsck.ext4: file/dir not found when trying to access /dev/mapper/crypthome_unformatted - Possibly non-existent device?
    mountall: fsck /home [$ID] exited with code 8
    mountall: fatal fsck error: /home

  Then it says that /root is still not mounted, which resides on /home,
  and nothing happens anymore.

  I can fix this using the "M"anual recovery, and doing the following:
  1. mount /home
  2. start every cryptdisk device using cryptdisk_start (necessary for all of them except crypthome)
  3. mount -a
  4. ctrl-d
  --- 
  Architecture: i386
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  Package: mountall 2.21
  PackageArchitecture: i386
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=de_DE:de:en_US:en_GB:en
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/zsh
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-3.30-generic 2.6.38-rc4
  Tags: natty
  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-3-generic i686
  UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout dip floppy fuse libvirtd lpadmin plugdev pulse sambashare sbuild scanner src video

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