cryptsetup doesn't understand UUID= in crypttab

Yeah, would be really nice to have cryptsetup (and especially the initramfs cryptroot script) understand UUID= and LABEL=, especially since /dev/hda devices appear as /dev/sda since gutsy. Would avoid some confusion.

regards

I used Kjell's patch to create a debdiff. It build and install correctly.

I don't quite understand this. I made a patch to gutsy's cryptsetup which gets along with specifying /dev/disk/by-uuid/<UUID> as the second argument in /etc/crypttab (which is the source device). What's wrong with that?

From the technical standpoint, nothing is wrong with that. But specifying uuid via /dev/disk/by-uuid/(uuid) is:

- non-standard, as compared to /etc/fstab as well as grub's menu.lst format of using UUID=(just the uuid)
- undocumented; not mentioned in /etc/crypttab or it's man page

Ah, I see. Well, why not. I'll apply Andrea's debdiff soon, thanks Kjell!

I tested the change, works fine. I'll submit that to Debian bug 445189 and upload it to Hardy. Thank you!

cryptsetup (2:1.0.5-2ubuntu6) hardy; urgency=low

  * Make cryptsetup understand devices specified by UUID=... or LABEL=
    in crypttab. (LP: #153597)

 -- Andrea Colangelo <email address hidden> Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:22:51 +0100

This does work for UUIDs (tested on Hardy Beta 2:1.0.5-2ubuntu9); it might be nice to also update the crypttab(5) man page and /usr/share/doc/cryptsetup/CryptoSwap.HowTo files. Incidentally, is this how the encrypted alternate installer sets up encrypted swap and other partitions?

Also, it would be nice if the cryptab command itself would understand UUID=xxxx-yyy- as well..

Now, in 'heron', crypttab does support uuid's (nice!), but cryptsetup from the command line does not.

I only need/want to luksOpen/mount my backup disk and I do this from a script. Now need to find a way to determine if my back partition will be /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1 (at boot time it *does* happen that the disk switches for sda to sdb).

You can work around this by just using /dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxx-yyy-

Heiko <email address hidden> writes:

> Also, it would be nice if the cryptab command itself would understand
> UUID=xxxx-yyy- as well..

please file another bug for this.

--
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4

Was this issue really fixed (status is 'Fix Released')?
I'm on Ubuntu 14.04 and I'm still having the problem.

Note on Importance: I use Ubuntu on a portable USB hard drive which I can connect to any computer and boot. These computers have different disk configurations, and therefore I prefer to specify mounts by UUID rather than device filename. (For example, in one computer boot disk could be /dev/sdb and on another could be /dev/sdc). Therefore, I think UUID is important.