Backtrack 4 Video – USB With “Full” Disk Encryption

This video is based on my Backtrack 4 - Bootable USB Thumbdrive with "Full" Disk Encryption how-to. Please feel free to point out any errors or issues.

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Using a netbook as an E-book reader at Ed Smiley’s Blog
February 15, 2010 at 8:07 pm

{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Whiskey January 19, 2010 at 1:21 pm

Hello,

I just glanced at your video to check out your work once again. I'm sure this will be a great visual aid to all those performing the installation for the first time.

I noticed one interesting bit... After I followed your written tutorial, my "Luks Passphrase" prompt is totally in a command prompt screen with no color or graphics and your video shows the fancy Back|Track GUI in the background...Any thoughts?

Regards,
Wh|$KeY

2 kriggins January 20, 2010 at 9:39 am

@Whiskey,

the fix-splash command will take care of that. I haven't included it in the how-to yet because I just found out about it recently. If you execute that after you have booted Backtrack from your USB drive, it will use the pretty boot screen :)

Kevin

3 singularity January 21, 2010 at 10:20 am

Great tutorial. Keep it up.

4 capron January 22, 2010 at 11:02 am

I was afraid off running the fix-splash because it mix with the initfs.

Wood bee a sad end off installation if the last command destroys the system
only too make it a littel bit more preitty. But it worked great.

5 .bT January 29, 2010 at 11:26 am

please can you tell me the title of the music track that you used for this video?

6 SD January 29, 2010 at 1:24 pm

Hi, Thanks so much for the video Kevin. I'm sure this is a total noob question. I did try to answer this myself before I asked. At 10:00 how did you get UUID replaced with the crypted volume ID? What keystrokes or procedure did you do?
Thanks,
Steve

7 kriggins January 29, 2010 at 4:02 pm

@.bT,

The music is from Farbo's first album "Far Beyond". The whole album can be found here: http://www.ektoplazm.com/free-music/farbo-far-beyond/ and is free which is very cool :)

I used "Filthy Stereo" and "Playful Sunshine."

@SD,

I used right click copy on the vol_id output and then when you have the cursor at the beginning of UUID type 'cw' without the quotes. That stands for 'change word' in vi. Then right click and paste.

-Kevin

8 .bT January 30, 2010 at 2:52 pm

thanks Kevin

9 SD January 30, 2010 at 7:15 pm

thanks Kevin! no wonder I couldn't find what the keystroke was.. I was looking for shortcuts to terminal!

10 Mike February 11, 2010 at 4:31 pm

Umm at the fix-splash you're in a different directory than before. This might confuse some users :)

11 Kevin February 12, 2010 at 4:59 pm

hey, Thanks a lot for this guide! I seem to be stuck at one point (around 10:00 on video), after u replaced the "UUID" with the actual UUID, how did you manage to go down the way you did inorder to type in ":wq"? sorry if this is a stupid question, but it's had me stumped for hours :) Thanks again!

12 kriggins February 12, 2010 at 5:25 pm

@kevin,

Once you have pasted the new UUID, hit the escape key and then ':wq' without the quotes.

-Kevin

13 Kevin February 20, 2010 at 3:52 pm

awsome! thanks a lot :)

14 nasos February 22, 2010 at 9:42 am

Hi
Thanks for the guide.
I got a warning with fdisk that I have to use gparted.
Continued anyway and everything seemed to work fine.
When I had to do "update-initramfs -u"
got an error that I cannot do it from a live cd.
Tried it 3 times so far but no luck.
Any ideas please?
Thanks
Nasos

15 Victor February 22, 2010 at 4:49 pm

Hello, I'm having a slight problem, I was following your tutorial and i was at the step where you paste the UUID and my computer shut down, so I though it's probably best to format and start again. I put the USB in, went to format, set it to FAT#@ and hit forma, it still said only 1kb left and the max cap. was 103MB left at the end (this is on a 8gb USB). Now i remember that I encrypted it, so how would i go about formatting it? Im guessing i should use the terminal? How would i do this, im new to Linux.

16 kriggins February 22, 2010 at 4:58 pm

@Nasos,

That is an indication that you didn't get chrooted. Make sure you get chrooted before you install hashalot, lvm2 and do all the script work.

@Victor,

Check out the written tutorial. It has instructions on how to open the encrypted partition if you have to do troubleshooting.

http://www.infosecramblings.com/backtrack/backtrack-4-bootable-usb-thumb-drive-with-full-disk-encryption/

It should get you to where you can finish up.

-Kevin

17 Nasos February 23, 2010 at 3:42 pm

Thanks very much kriggins for your reply.
I've tried it again and when I reboot, in the splash screen
I have to enter LUKS passphrase twice and then it drops in to shell
with an alert that " /dev/mapper/vg-root " does not exist.
Thanks again for your time.
Nasos

18 Nasos February 24, 2010 at 3:13 am

I have redone the steps after installation and it works!
Don't know what I did different from last time though :)
Thanks very much
Nasos

19 Flow February 27, 2010 at 3:27 pm

Hi guys,

I just followed this nice video, but I have a litle problem.

After mounting the new installation and chrooting it / I do not have any network connections in the console.
I cannot run apt-get install and udpate for the new thumb drive installation.

In another new command line it is working but not in the one I mounted and chrooted the new installation.

I actually do not know what to do in this case?
Could you help me out? / many thanks!

20 kriggins February 27, 2010 at 6:23 pm

@Flow,

Sounds like you didn't get the proc and sys filesystems mounted after you chrooted. Check out the instructions here and see if that helps.

http://www.infosecramblings.com/backtrack/backtrack-4-bootable-usb-thumb-drive-with-full-disk-encryption/

-Kevin

21 Flow February 28, 2010 at 7:50 am

Hey Kevin,

thanks for your fast response.
I followed all the instructions in the mentioned article before and mounted proc and sys after chrooting - but I have the same problem.

I will start from scratch today and see if that helps, because I disconnected the network during installation for a short period / maybe this is related.

Best regards,
Florian

22 max3d February 28, 2010 at 1:28 pm

problem at the updateing the image: update-initramfs is disabled since running on a live CD ....

solution was found at ubuntu bugs:

mv /usr/sbin/update-initramfs /usr/sbin/update-initramfs.old
ln -s /rofs/usr/sbin/update-initramfs /usr/sbin/update-initramfs

23 kriggins February 28, 2010 at 3:08 pm

@max,

Actually the problem here is usually caused because the user did not chroot correctly. That error is fine during much of the install. One just has to make sure to chroot before the final update-initrams.

-kevin

24 Flow March 1, 2010 at 4:26 am

Hey,

it worked now for me, I just did it again - maybe it was a problem during installation and disconnecting from the Lan.
So far everything is fine.

Thanks again for your help Kevin!

25 bala March 1, 2010 at 4:30 pm

Hey!

10x for the video. Really nice and simple. I just don't know why the installation takes so loooooong :| I think about an hour or more has passed and it has only come up to 42%...
I'm not using it anyway on this pc so i guess i'll have to wait about another hour or so. Hope everything will work fine because I plan on using it tomorrow(today).
Thank you again! Gonna light a big spliff for you :)

26 Thx1138 March 2, 2010 at 10:37 pm

Enter LUKS passphrase:
device-mapper: table: 253:0: crypt: Error allocating crypto tfm
Command failed: No key availible with this passphrase

Get this on boot.. this is the 3th or 4th install. I'm not getting there :|
The password is right, I know that.
I tried veeeery many hours to install please help me.

27 Thx1138 March 2, 2010 at 10:40 pm

Are there any password policies?

28 kriggins March 3, 2010 at 12:15 am

@thx1138,

The crypto tfm error is almost always due to the crypto modules not getting copied to the initrd image correctly. Double check that you have the /etc/initramfs-tools/modules file updated to include the indicated modules.

As far as password policies go, what exactly are you referring to? Ubuntu uses pam for authentication, so any password complexity, etc. policies that can be configured for pam on any other Linux system should work.

-Kevin

29 max3d March 3, 2010 at 12:33 am

quote @ 78% of the install: "We are sorry. The installer crashed"

- I am getting no luck 3rd day in a row.

30 Thx1138 March 11, 2010 at 6:34 am

well i followed the instructions exactley... for many times :) . I was wondering if i could use the same method to install on hdd with encryption by simply replacing the device name. Is it possible?
As i remember i did have some pb with the update.. i tought i sorted it out. I want to try to install to hdd with encryption asap. Waiting for reply.

31 Thx1138 March 11, 2010 at 6:35 am

Ps: i can't fail since i plan on formating my entire hdd 250gb
If i fail i'll most probably give up and all my data will be gone :(

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