Classic very old grub kernel & initramfs

Moriah · Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2024 1:54 pm Post subject:

Thanks so much for your excellent help, and especially for all the articles. I had never seen those before, and they are extremely helpful and informative.
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pietinger · Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2024 2:00 pm Post subject:

Moriah · Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2024 10:57 pm Post subject:

I finally got the time to get back to my new system and its kernel build.

I built linux-5.15.32-gentoo-r1 by doing a make oldconfig and the .config from my working but ancient linux-4.14.83-gentoo kernel. It worked well enough to boot, but I noticed some lockup and/or crash problems when viewing youtube videos; it appears that there is something slightly off in the audio, because one time it kept repeating a short section of the audio, and the second time it just stopped. Just my hunch that it is an audio problem.

Anyway, since I do not want to be running linux-5.15.32-gentoo-r1 anyway, I decided to emerge the linux-6.6.13-gentoo kernel and trouble shoot that if the problem still appeared. My approach was to take the .config from the linux-5.15.32-gentoo-r1 build (after the make oldconfig) and do another make oldconfig in the linux-6.6.13-gentoo directory.

I always save the original virgin .config to .config.old before I copy the old .config and do a make oldconfig, but I did not see any .config in the linux-6.6.13-gentoo directory that I could rename to .config.old; where is the linux-6.6.13-gentoo .config file?

Moriah · Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2024 11:09 pm Post subject:

Never mind. :oops:

I see one must do a make menuconfig and save the result to get the initial .config file.

Sorry to bother you.
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pietinger · Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2024 11:09 pm Post subject:

Moriah · Posted: Tue Mar 05, 2024 12:11 am Post subject:

I did the make menuconfig and then did a save without changing anything. This gave me a .config which I renamed to l.config.old, then I copied to .config from the 5.15.32kernel that I already built and did a make oldconfig. I followed that with a make menuconfig just to look around and make sure everything looked sane. I am now in the process of building the kernel by running make after running make modules-prepare.

We shall see how this works after everything gets built...
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Moriah · Posted: Tue Mar 05, 2024 1:44 am Post subject:

I have built a 6.6.13 kernel by doing a make oldconfig on the 5.15.32 kernel, which was made with a make oldconfig on the 4.14.83 kernel that I have been running for several years.

As mentioned earlier, I saw a bit of trouble with the 5.15.32 kernel, but I went ahead and built the 6.6.13 kernel anyway, since that is what I want to migrate to, and I figure if any problems with it, then I can fix them there and forget about the 5.15.32 kernel.

I need to put some hours of actual typical use on the 6.6.13 kernel to build confidence in it, but at least it boots, X works, and the network works, as does firefox and thunderbird. I will run it for a few days and see how it does...
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pietinger · Posted: Tue Mar 05, 2024 2:09 am Post subject:

Moriah · Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 1:39 am Post subject:

Once I had the 6.6.13 kernel working, I rebuilt my lenovo thinkpad w530 from scratch, since it was pretty bit-rotted.

I did have compete backup on my backup server of its previous contents .

So I built it per the gentoo handbook, but when I tried to boot it, the cryptsetup luksOpen failed !!! :evil:

So I rebooted back into the live boot usb stick and manually did the cryptsetup luksOpen, and it worked fine.

The kernel and its associated initramfs are on my usb bootstick, and it worked before I rebuild the laptop disk, so I am puzzled as to what could have gone haywire. Could it be that when I did the cryptsetup luksFormat, since I was using possibly a newer version of cryptsetup that what the initramfs was built with, that I got bit by the version change? I don't even know if the version of cryptsetup changed on the live usb boot stick, but thats all I can think of.

I haven't tried updating the version of cryptsetup in the initramfs yet. I wanted to get some other opinions before I did that.

Any ideas?
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pietinger · Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 12:23 pm Post subject:

Unfortunately I'm not an expert in automated cryptsetup solutions, but maybe this thread will help, in which @sMueggli has put the PO on the right track:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8819254-highlight-.html
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Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21637

From the description, my guess would be that the newer cryptsetup changed some default parameter, that the live kernel + live initramfs have support for a wide variety of choices, and that the custom kernel has support for only a limited number of choices. The old LUKS was made with choices that the limited system can handle. The new one was made with choices that the limited system cannot handle, but that the live kernel, with its broad support, can handle.

If you need further help, please use cryptsetup luksDump device to produce a report on it. Do NOT post the output in full, as it may, depending on options, include the volume key, which you must keep secret. I want to see these fields:

Version
Cipher name
Cipher mode
Hash spec

Check, or post the kernel configuration so we can check, that the ciphers and hash are supported for your limited system.

Moriah · Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 6:23 pm Post subject:

So here is the luksDump for my failing laptop

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21637

Updating cryptsetup is a good idea, but as I noted above, I am also concerned about whether your custom kernel supports all the right features for the failing laptop. That is why I suggested that you either check the kernel configuration, or share it so we can check it.

Updating only cryptsetup and changing nothing else is unlikely to make things worse, but if your kernel support is lacking, then updating only cryptsetup will not solve this.

Moriah · Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2024 7:20 pm Post subject:

Well if you look at this thread earlier, you will see that the same kernel has been successfully used with a disk that was encrypted the old way, and that I boot from a usb drive that has the kernel on the usb drive.

Do you still want to see my .config file? Its pretty big.

Moriah · Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2024 10:45 pm Post subject:

There is a discussion at https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1030222-start-0.html about building a cryptsetup for an initramfs, but it is 9 years old. My initramfs is 14 years old. I built a static linked cryptsetup for it back then. Now the discussion is whether to build static linked, or to just use the cryptsetup in the normal distribution and put the needed libraries in the lib directory of the initramfs. There is also conccerns about dependencies on the kernel. I don't want to have to update my initramfs for many more years. Should I static link my cryptsetup, or use libraries in lib?
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Foghorn Leghorn is a Warner Bros. cartoon character.