An interesting but mostly pointless exercise.

So, let me explain my mind frame when I was approaching this.  Some of it is quasi logical, other parts is just me being weird.

For some reason or other.. I wanted to have a few raw block devices.  They're usually created using dd command.

ie.  dd if=/dev/zero of=foobar.raw bs=1M count=2048
bs = block size so the size of foobar.raw = 1m * 2048 = 2048mb = 2 gb.

Now some operations you can perform directly on the file foobar.raw (like formatting it), but since I'm trying to do crytpo + lvm, I need to at least pretend that it's a device.  losetup lets me associate a device name, in my case /dev/loop0 with a file on my file system.

So...  here's my instruction set to get a file to behave like a file system, and allow you to do all sorts of unholy things to it.

**Most of these commands assume root.  Either prepend sudo to all of these, or just become root via su - or your favorite procedure to get god mode.

1.  Create a raw file.

    # dd if=/dev/zero of=foobar.raw bs=1M count=2048

2.  Losetup, to associate file with a device name.

    # losetup /dev/loop0  ./foobar.raw


3.  Cryptosetup, really really not needed, but hey.. why not. 

3a.  Format the device we just created (loop0) to be cryptsetup device.

cryptsetup -y --cipher aes-cbc-essiv:sha256 --key-size 256 luksFormat /dev/loop0

3b.  Lets open the device, and give the encrypted device a name. 

 cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/loop0 cryptoLoop    ## 

4.  Now that we have an encryption layer.. lets's create an LVM, which allows me to 

extend the size of my file system or join multiple files...and all sorts of craziness/flexibility.

Most of these steps are your standard LVM setup, but we'll note them here for consitency.

pvcreate /dev/mapper/cryptoLoop
vgcreate cryptoLvmGrp
lvcreate -l100%VG -n lvmData cryptoLvmGrp

now, in theory you can format the lvm.

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/cryptoLvmGrp/lvmData
mount /dev/cryptoLvmGrp/lvmData loopback

standard usage rules apply, permissions and such.  Once you're done
using it, you need to shut down all the layers in order.

Shutdown:

1.  umount loopback

2.  vgchange -a n 

3.  crypsetup luksClose cryptoLoop

4.  losetup -d /dev/loop0 

So, in retrospect. I can probably just create an xfs/ext file system and expand the file system as needed... but meh.. I kinda like this elaborate setup.

I'm going post some scripts to automate the creation, loading, and unloading of these systems, though some of the paths for LVM and cryptsetup depends on the distro.

Edit:  https://github.com/safaci2000/RawCryptoLVM  Some really dumb scripts that work for me.  

Gentoo is Amazing!!

This is a flame post on Gentoo.  I found it funny mainly because I used Gentoo for the greater
part of Linux experience.  I really think it's an amazing distribution.  That being said.. enjoy the laughs.

http://funroll-loops.info/

HP Mini 210–1076NR + Ubuntu Netbook 10.10

I had a hell of a time getting the broadband working.  This particular devices comes with
Gobi 2000 and I had to do a lot of silly playing around to get it up and running.  It is odd
that the live CD out of the box supports it, but the final installed version didn't.

If you plan doing an install, I would try to be somewhere you can get a Ethernet cable to
plugin so you can get all these updates and get things squared away.

1. if it's not installed already, (apt-get install gobi-loader) get the firmware from the windows partition.
There should be a folder named Qualcomm in your standard Program Files folder.  Which contains the various firmware.  This document explains which folder to get:.  You need to grab the content of the appropriate folder
and copy it to /lib/firmware/gobi

reboot and everything worked fine for me.  If that fails, you may have to load it manually.
    gobi_loader /dev/ttyUSB0 /lib/firmware/gobi

fyi.  If you have the wrong firmware (at least in my case) it just hanged there indefinitely, while when I had the right firmware it worked almost instantly.

Wireless didn't work for me out of the box, but that's the typical broadcomm being "special" thing.  If you do the usual updates it started working for me again due to penguin magic from the ubuntu repos.   I'm sure there's about 800 sources of how to get this working, so I won't go into it.  If you have trouble.. post a comment, and I'll update the article.