Installing Fedora 31 to existing encrypted partition

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1

I have a laptop with Fedora 30, that I want to upgrade. Since the in place upgrade refuses to work I want to do a reinstall.

Problem: My harddisk is encrypted.

In this encrypted partition I have separate LVM volumes for Root and Home, and I want to keep the date in Home, but overwrite Root.

My issues is that the installer makes me run in circles here.

I did the following:

  • Selected the disk, and selected custom partitioning.
  • Selected the encrypted partition, entered the password and clicked OK.
    Result: Nothing changes. The volumes inside the encrypted partition do not become visisble.
    Expected result: Luks volume disappears, other olumes become visible, and I can, as usual, configure where they should be mounted, whether they should be erased etc…
    On a hunch I did a disk rescan. This brings me back to where I select the disk, but then I do see the volumes inside the encrypted volume.
    And here I can then try to assign mount points etc…
    When I then click “done” I get the message the the encrypted LUKS volume cannot be used unless I enter a password. I have no option to enter a password at that point in time however, as the LUKS volume has disappeared from the disk list.
    The message also suggests I do a rescan, which, when I do, brings me back to the beginning. So I keep looping around:
  • Decrypt disk
  • rescan
  • assign volumes
  • rescan
    repeat ad infinitum…

So what am I doing wrong here?

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2

Possibly do a backup of /home then remove the encrypted volume and do the install while recreating the encrypted volume. Finally restore /home.

I have not used LUKS so cannot answer from experience.

You have not said why an upgrade does not work but maybe fixing that would be easier.

3

Hi @krist,

That sounds like a nasty Anaconda bug. You could try mounting the encrypted partition from outside Anaconda, then run the installer afterwards. Ananconda should then see the volumes and pickup from there. I do not have experience with LVMs although I hear its pretty cool. In any case, You may find this page helpful for your case.

You should skip the ‘Prerequisites’ Section … I think those tools are already available to the user in Fedora.

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