[2.4] initrd + linuxrc woes

Hi Pete,
            Just a guess,is it like u first pack the executables and
then ask a program to encrypt it?or simply copy an executable into an
encrypted partition?
If it is the second case ,check it the command for creation of such
partion or the program for  encryption know the size of the
partition..ie. in a way the number of executables to be encrypted.Can
you post the commands for cornering the point?
cheers,
Kaushal.
Pete Shepard wrote:

The initrd itself is not encrypted, of course. It's just used to
mount an encrypted partition.

Basically i have

  /dev/sda1 -> /boot    (plain ext2)
  /dev/sda2 -> /        (aes128 encrypted, ext2)

So, the linuxrc program within the initrd basically has to
execute this command sequence:

losetup -p5 -e AES128 /dev/loop0 /dev/sda2 5< pwd.txt
mount /dev/loop0 /new_root
cd /new_root
pivot_root . old_root
exec chroot . sh -c 'umount /old_root; exec /sbin/init' \
  <dev/console >dev/console 2>&1

As said, my initrd doesn't use a shell script. I'm using a
simple c program based on the sample in the loop-aes source
distribution.

However, this is moot now. Today i discovered that if i'm
using EXT2 instead CRAMFS the initrd executes perfectly.

For the CRAMFS version to work i need to put any helper
programs and libraries (losetup, mount, etc.) onto the
/boot partition that i have to mount within the linuxrc.
Adding them to the initrd-image doesn't work (and i checked
permissions more than once!).

Seems that i tripped over some obscure CRAMFS bug in this
old kernel (2.4.25).

Best regards,
Pete