How to do encrypted frugal install ?

[Member Vincent17]

BitJam wrote here

You could also create an encrypted “frugal” install on your hard drive using live-usb-maker with the –force=usb option and the –size=XX% option so it does not gobble up the entire drive. It will want to re-partition the entire drive but there are simple ways around this. When it is time to do a big upgrade, you could clone the frugal install to a usb, do the upgrade and remaster on another system and then manually copy back the linuxfs file.

BitJam, could you please reveal how to avoid repartitioning the entire drive? This won’t be a tip/trick until you do! 😉 Thanks!

P.S.
The live-usb-maker has great –help and man files, but I don’t find (or recognize) the option for this. On an expendable fat32 drive with files on it, I tried:
sudo live-usb-maker --from=/path/antiX-19_386-base.iso --force=usb --size=50 --target=sdd -E
The frugal install went perfectly but left half the drive unallocated; original files were lost.
I’m doing this from MX 17.3, live-usb-maker version 2.23.04

• This topic was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Vincent17. Reason: clarity

[Member olsztyn]

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From my experience with Frugal I never needed to re-partition. It puts Frugal instance on any existing partition as subset. This was done with Frugal option on boot rather than using Live USB Maker though…
I think the above would be to allocate the entire partition as Frugal instance, but looking at the topic title I am also curious if it is possible to create an encrypted Frugal instance…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Member fatmac]

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If I’m not mistaken, live-usb-maker will normally use the whole drive, with what isn’t used by the system as file storage space for your usage.
So if you limit the amount of space used, you should be able to create a new partition in the rest of the drive, (I think).

If you want a frugal install, I think you just copy the necessary files to the drive, then use something to boot it from there, (but it has been a long time since I’ve done it).

Linux (& BSD) since 1999

[Member Vincent17]

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duplicate post removed

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by anticapitalista.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Vincent17.

[Member Vincent17]

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duplicate post removed

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Vincent17.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Vincent17.

[Member Vincent17]

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Encrypted home using ecryptfs-utils works in a frugal install, but at startup, there is a 30 sec pause at a black screen, then brief “failed to execute login command” message. Normal login screen appears and login + decryption are successful. homefs has encrypted files in /home/.ecryptfs/demo/.Private. They get mounted to ram as /home/demo at login.
———

If you want a frugal install, I think you just copy the necessary files to the drive, then use something to boot it from there

I have been able to do this in an ordinary frugal install. For encrypted frugal install to flash drive,
sdc 7.5G
├─sdc1 antiX-Live-usb 149M ext4
├─sdc2 3.5G crypto_LUKS —–linuxfs, rootfs, homefs are here
└─sdc3 antiX-uefi 50M vfat
I don’t think it’s possible to copy to a folder without losing encryption.
———
sudo live-usb-maker --from=/path/antix.iso --force=usb --size=50 --target=sdb3 -E
where sdb is an empty partition on SSD, failed with “Error: Device /dev/sdb3 is not a disk device”

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by Vincent17. Reason: clarity

[Member Vincent17]

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Some progress to report. I made a new frugal install of antiX-17.4 and used ecryptfs-utils to encrypt /home/demo. The delay mentioned above is now only 8 seconds and the “failed to execute login command” message is absent. User demo is set to require password to log in; I don’t remember how it was on my first try but it seems likely I had it set to auto-login.

This is a good solution for me: demo’s personal files, configs, browser histories etc. are encrypted, rootfs is not. 🙂

[Member Vincent17]

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Hello,
I still tinker with encrypted frugal install methods. I placed a copy of an existing frugal install on an encrypted flash drive and booted as shown in the screenshot. AntiX seems to think it’s booting a live device. The message is “Fatal Error Could not find file antiX/linuxfs…Please contact BitJam… ”
I have tried many grub menu entries, such as pdir=/ pdev=(crypto0) puuid= etc, but antiX does not get the message.
I’ll appreciate ideas and explanations. Thanks

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Vincent17. Reason: wrong image uploaded :(

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   grub.png
   

[Member armando]

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Vincent17 wrote:

Hello,
I still tinker with encrypted frugal install methods. I placed a copy of an existing frugal install on an encrypted flash drive and booted as shown in the screenshot. AntiX seems to think it’s booting a live device. The message is “Fatal Error Could not find file antiX/linuxfs…Please contact BitJam… ”
I have tried many grub menu entries, such as pdir=/ pdev=(crypto0) puuid= etc, but antiX does not get the message.
I’ll appreciate ideas and explanations. Thanks

have you tried with chainloader +1 instead ‘linux /vm…..’ ‘initrd /init….’ ?

...
...
> set root=(crypto0)
> chainloader +1
> boot

that’s the way I boot USB flash drives in the grub when there’s no bios usb boot available. I’ve never tried encrypted things, and I don’t even know how chainloader works, but maybe it works.

[Member Vincent17]

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@armando Thanks, I tried chainloader. It reports “you need to load the kernel first” I suspect if I copied a live usb into the crypto file, grub would chainload grub and boot the live usb: a backup plan.

Writing `set root=(crypto0)
linux /vmlinuz pdir=/ bdir=/ persist_all` stops antiX from looking for the antiX folder, but it still reports
Could not find file /linuxfs
Searched devices: /dev/sdc /dev/sdb
Searched types: usb,cd

bdev=(crypto0) results in “Could not find device (crypto0)”

@moderators, thanks for fixing my botched attachment in prior post 🙂

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Vincent17.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Vincent17.

[Member armando]

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@Vincent17

you can try:

...
...
> set root=(crypto0)
> configfile (crypto0)/boot/grub/grub.cfg

booting from here is not likely. but you can edit (E), and copy the ‘linux’ and ‘initrd’ and try those values in another restart like

...
...
> set root=(crypto0)
> linux (crypto0)/boot/vmlinuz-###orwhatheveryoufindinyourentrymenu
> initrd (crypto0)/boot/initrd.img-###orwhateveryoudindinyourentrymenu
> boot

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by armando.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by armando.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by armando.

[Member Vincent17]

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I conclude that the approach I was trying won’t work. 🙁 Someone please correct or confirm.

Grub can decrypt a partition to a virtual device (crypto0) and load vmlinuz and initrd from it, but I think once grub hands control over to linux, (crypto0) is gone and forgotten.

If some initrds are set up to ask for a password when presented with a luks-encrypted drive, it would explain the statement “I’d be prompted twice for the LUKS passphrase (once by GRUB, then again by the initramfs).”

Apparently, Antix’s initrd is not designed this way. With bdev=sdb pdev=sdb (sdb=hd1=crypto-luks flash drive), it does not prompt for a password, it just fails to find linuxfs.

@armando, thanks for your suggestions. I’ll try them.

EDIT: @armando, those commands also fail with “could not find linuxfs” as soon as grub hands over to initrd.
To get past this, I guess it will be necessary to add cryptsetup to the initrd.
Doing a frugal install in its own partition probably sounds strange; I want the option not to save a session.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Vincent17.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Vincent17.

[Member olsztyn]

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I apologize for being pain and revisiting this somewhat exhaustively discussed thread…
Since about four months passed I am curious and very interested if anything changed in missing antiX capability of encrypted frugal install in a straightforward way, as such capability exists for Live and plain installed antiX.
If no such capability has been developed I understand, unfortunate as it is, but it significantly reduces usefulness of frugal in comparison to Live…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

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