[Bug 1490824] Re: "unsafe swap space detected" error prevents encrypted install when swap partition exists

Jb jebsolutions at gmail.com
Sat Sep 19 19:49:59 UTC 2015


Confirmed.  Still broken.

While there is a work around for this that works I would ask the devs to
please consider the following three things and to increase the priority
of this item.

First, I don't think I'm the only one who thinks full disk encryption is
a "must have" security feature on any operating system in 2015.  Must
have also implies must work.

Secondly, this should just work out of box.  If you know enough to
google and figure out how to manually unmount the compressed ram swap
then congratulations.  You are the less than 1% of people who will
succeed in getting this feature to work.  The other 99% will just call
this feature broken.

Third, this feature has been broken since at least 14.04.

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Title:
  "unsafe swap space detected" error prevents encrypted install when
  swap partition exists

Status in ubiquity package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  I am trying to install wily-desktop-i386.iso, downloaded on August 31.

  I am trying to install onto a USB drive, sdc, with sdc1 being /boot
  and sdc2 being a physical volume for encryption.

  Also on this system is a hard drive, sda, with a previous Ubuntu
  install, including a swap partition.

  When I try to create a physical volume for encryption on sdc2, I am
  prompted for a password.  After entering the password, the following
  message is displayed:

  "Unsafe swap space detected.  An unsafe swap space has been detected.
  [snip]  Please disable the swap space (e.g. by running swapoff) ..."

  The problem is, no matter how many times I run swapoff, ubiquity
  reactivates the swap automatically and repeatedly.

  For example, even if I run swapoff immediately prior to entering the
  encryption password, ubiquity will reactivate the swap prior to
  creating the physical volume for encryption, and the creation will
  again fail.

  So...

  1) It appears that swapoff is insufficient.  In reality, there must be
  no visible swap partitions on the system.

  2) The error message "Unsafe swap space detected" could certainly be
  displayed prior to asking me to enter my password.

  Either or both of these could be fixed.  Or the error message could be
  updated to say: "Sorry, you cannot create encrypted partitions as long
  as swap partitions are visible on this system."

  Thanks!

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