[NCLUG] 11.04 with lvm encryption

[Bob Proulx]

Sean Reifschneider wrote:
>    Network installing Natty 64 on my box kept dropping the network
>    interface during install.  I had to go to another console and kill dhcp
>    and then manually configure the network ("ip link up", "ip addr add",
>    "ip route add default")...

Is this using network-manager, wicd, ifupdown, or other?

Network manager has a notorious reputation for dropping the network
during the upgrades on Debian.  Very bad when the machine being
upgraded is remote.  Unfortunately the default in Debian is now NM
instead of ifupdown and so this is rather a widespread issue, and as
you might imagine has spawned a lot of discussion on the mailing lists.

Even when I am local on the machine console I usually run --download
first to get all of the package files onto the machine before the
upgrade starts so that I should be able to finish it even without the
network available.  Sometimes the download will fail due to a flakey
mirror in the round-robin IP rotation, or for some other reason, so
putting it into a loop and letting it run is convenient.  Eventually
it will succeed and have all of the packages local and ready to go.

  until apt-get upgrade -d -y; do : try again ; done
  until apt-get dist-upgrade -d -y; do : try again ; done

I haven't yet upgraded my own laptop with encrypted LVM from Lenny to
Squeeze which would move me to a nearby kernel and userland to Natty.
Still another year of security upgrades available for Lenny so no
hurry.  :-) Other machines I have upgraded from Lenny to Squeeze
(without encrypted LVM) have only had minor issues.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=565126

Bob