Linux dual-boot on self-encrypted drive (Dell Data Protection)

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At work I have a recent Dell Latitude E6440 laptop. The IT department allowed me to install Linux on it on a dedicated partitions they created. However, they won't support me if anything gets broken because of the Linux installation. So far so good :-)

This laptop has a self-encrypted drive (SED also known as Full-Encrypted Drive or FED). The hard drive (form Seagate) uses the TCG OPAL SATA standard and Dell has its own layer on top which is called Dell Data Protection. Again so far so good.

My concern is that this new implementation of their Data Protection suite looks quite integrated with Microsoft Windows and Active Directory. On older version of this suite, I was using a dedicated login and password which were different than the Windows one. But on this latest version, I need to use my Active Directory credentials and I do not need to authenticate on Windows, the successfull authentication is somehow passed to Windows during the boot process.

Now I have already tried to boot on a live USB and it worked successfully provided that I first wait for Windows to boot then do a soft reboot and then I was able to boot from the USB disk and into the live USB. So this is possible to have Linux on a second drive.

Question

However, with such set-up is it possible to have Linux on a dedicated partition (same HDD as Windows) which would then installed its own bootloader (e.g. Grub2) without breaking this special boot process?

Note: I do not mind if I need to login once at boot to "unlock" the drive and once again to login in the OS. That's what I have been used to anyway.

Extra info: I plan to have Ubuntu LTS as a dual boot on this machine. I already have Windows 7 Pro/Entreprise installed.

Huygens

Posted 2014-03-02T10:43:02.767

Reputation: 1 340

Answers

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It works!

We have a super suportive IT department and they made me a full disk backup after which I went on installing Ubuntu. And the installation is a success. Dual-booting in both Windows 7 or Ubuntu.

First I started the laptop as usual and booted under Windows. I then plugged in the USB stick with the Ubuntu installation image (Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS) and rebooted the machine.

While in the reboot process I pressed F12 (or F10 can't remember) to "pop up" the boot menu to choose the boot device. I choose "UEFI USB Flash Drive" (or equivalent name). Ubuntu started up and I choose to install it. I partitionned manually the available space and it a standard installation.

After installation, the system rebooted but I got directly into Windows, no Grub promt. I perhaps miss configured the boot loader during manual partitionning (surprisingly as I had explectictly chosen sda, but anyway). I rebooted again on the USB stick and did mount the new /boot on sda and installed the Grub boot loader using this resource. Rebooted again and this time everything was as expected.

I have selected Windows as the default boot (required by the IT department), and I do not need to enter twice my credentials (at boot prompt to unlock the disk, and then again to login to Windows, I only need to do it at boot prompt). But just after entering the boot prompt credentials (to unlock the disk) I can switch to Ubuntu if I would wish to.

So it has been working perfectly :-)

Huygens

Posted 2014-03-02T10:43:02.767

Reputation: 1 340