I recently upgraded my laptop to the latest Ubuntu 8. The upgrade process was easy and quick however after the reboot I was unable to access my home-directory. I have a separate partition on which /home is mounted. This partition is encrypted with cryptsetup.

When I start the cryptdisk daemon it returns an error:

/etc/init.d/cryptdisks start
* Starting remaining cryptodisks...
mount: special device /dev/mapper/cryptohome does not exist
Enter passphrase:

Checking the status with cryptdisk doesn’t show any errors:
/dev/mapper/cryptohome is active:
cipher: aes-cbc-plain
keysize: 256 bits
device: /dev/sda3
offset: 0 sectors
size: 40949685 sectors
mode: read/write
And the device is there:
ls -l /dev/mapper/
total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root root 10, 63 2008-07-12 17:20 control
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 254, 0 2008-07-12 17:47 cryptohome

Crypttab is also configured correctly:

#
cryptohome /dev/sda3 none vol_id

Mounting the /home partition on /dev/mapper/cryptohome (as root) returns :

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/cryptohome,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
with these errors in dmesg
[ 1966.915329] VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev dm-0

Creating new encrypted partitions (with similar settings) works like a charm. The partition worked perfectly for months before the upgrade and currently I don’t have any clue on how to access my encrypted data. Any help would be highly appreciated.

UPDATE

The problem was not tied to cryptsetup but to something entirely different. My passphrase contains a number of special characters. My keyboard layout was changed to something without the “µ ù ç^” characters. I didn’t notice this during the test because then I was using a rather simple passphrase.

I recently upgraded my laptop to the latest Ubuntu 8. The upgrade process was easy and quick however after the reboot I was unable to access my home-directory. I have a separate partition on which /home is mounted. This partition is encrypted with cryptsetup.

When I start the cryptdisk daemon it returns an error:

/etc/init.d/cryptdisks start
* Starting remaining cryptodisks...
mount: special device /dev/mapper/cryptohome does not exist
Enter passphrase:

Checking the status with cryptdisk doesn’t show any errors:
/dev/mapper/cryptohome is active:
cipher: aes-cbc-plain
keysize: 256 bits
device: /dev/sda3
offset: 0 sectors
size: 40949685 sectors
mode: read/write
And the device is there:
ls -l /dev/mapper/
total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root root 10, 63 2008-07-12 17:20 control
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 254, 0 2008-07-12 17:47 cryptohome

Crypttab is also configured correctly:

#
cryptohome /dev/sda3 none vol_id

Mounting the /home partition on /dev/mapper/cryptohome (as root) returns :

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/cryptohome,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

with these errors in dmesg
[ 1966.915329] VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev dm-0

Creating new encrypted partitions (with similar settings) works like a charm. The partition worked perfectly for months before the upgrade and currently I don’t have any clue on how to access my encrypted data. Any help would be highly appreciated.

Install the kio-plugins

Get a list of all the installed packages / applications in Ubunto or Debian Linux with

You can get the contents of one package with

If OpenOffice doesn’t show any icons in the toolbars then you might want to re-install the packages

• openoffice.org-style-default
• openoffice.org-style-human

.

Modern X11 drivers support resolution changing on the fly (as in, you don’t need to restart your X11 server). You can check if your driver supports this when you see this

Changing the resolution is very easy:

Entering xrandr without any options shows all the available resolutions.

A short command on how to change Ubuntu so that it will only start in text mode, no X11 (graphical) mode. The following removes the graphical greeter from the runlevels :

Launch it with gnome-terminal –geometry 135×30 (edit the menu or create a new launcher).

Adjust the launchsettings in ~/.xbindkeysrc

Deze week werd de nieuwe release 7.10 van Ubuntu uitgebracht.

Zoals steeds bij elke update moet ik na het hele update-proces m’n Xorg.conf file manueel aanpassen. Om god-weet-welke reden krijg ik met de standaard geïnstalleerde i810 driver enkel maar beeld tot een 800×600 resolutie. Als ik de driver vervang door de intel driver dan werkt het wel. Vooraf moet ik natuurlijk wel zorgen dat het juiste pakket geïnstalleerd is. De intel driver zit in het pakket

xserver-xorg-video-intel – X.Org X server — Intel i8xx, i9xx display driver

en de regels die ik moet aanpassen zijn (in /etc/X11/xorg.conf) :

Section “Device”
Identifier “Intel Integrated Graphics Controller”
Driver “intel”
BusID “PCI:0:2:0″
EndSection

De nieuwe versie van Ubuntu heef enkele leuke nieuwe zaken. Meest opvallende voor mij is de gnome-rdp, een volledig herwerkte versie van de remote desktop client. Je kan verschillende connecties via SSH, RDP of VNC bewaren. Superhandig als je vaak met dezelfde instellingen naar “remote” machines moet connecteren. Eén nadeel wel. Je kan bij de connectieparameters niet zelf je public-key bepalen, zoiets moet je nog via de eigen ssh-config instellen.