How to install Ubuntu 10.04 on a Netbook with Full Disk Encryption
Installing Ubuntu on a netbook is trivial. Installing Ubuntu/Kubuntu with full disk encryption is absolutely easy. Unfortunately, installing it on a netbook with full disk encryption is not (at least not without a CD-ROM drive).
First of all, the desktop Ubuntu and Kubuntu install images don’t support full disk encryption. So get the Alternate ISO from here (Kubuntu users this way, please). Then create a bootable USB drive using UNetbootin.
Ready? Then boot your netbook from the USB drive, and proceed with the installation using this guide. You will be able to select your country, keyboard and configure your network. Then the installation will fail, because the installer won’t find a CD-ROM drive. Yuck.
Okay, if there is no CD-ROM drive we just have to mount the installer ISO. For this we copy the alternate installer ISO to a second USB stick, plug it into the netbook and give the system a few seconds to recognize it. Then we use alt+F2 to switch to a command line and hit so we can enter commands. First, we should make sure that both USB drives are there:
ls -la /dev/sd*
should return something like this:
/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc
/dev/sda is your hard disk, /dev/sdb is the USB drive you booted from, and /dev/sdc is the second USB drive containing the installer ISO file (unless you have a second hard drive). Use mount if you are not sure if and/or where your USB drives are mounted to.Now you can mount the second USB drive to /mnt and the ISO image to /cdrom:
mount -t vfat /dev/sdc /mnt mount /mnt/ubuntu-10.04-alternate-i386.iso /cdrom/ exit
Next, hit alt+f1 to return to the install menu and select “Detect CD-ROM”. The installation will proceed as described in the blog post above.
Have fun with Ubuntu 10.04! 
Thank you for the guide on how to overcome this problem. I was having no end of problem getting Ubuntu Studio (only available as Alternate Install .iso) installed, and this was my first problem.
Can you tell us why it is that the Live CD versions install perfectly from USB, but the Alternate ones don’t without this little “tweak”? Also, can you mount the .iso residing on the hard drive itself, rather than burning it to a second flash drive?
My pardon, I should have read the article a little closer. Of course, I have a second hard drive, but I see that my “mounting the .iso” question was already answered.
@-kg-
It has been a few months since I did that, but I think that the normal ISO didn’t bring the netbook features that I wanted, and the install routine of the alternate ISO didn’t allow me to set up encrypted hard drives.
On a second thought, I will install the upcoming Ubuntu 10.10 with full disk encryption using the normal ISOs, and add the netbook features later.
Thanks for the tip. Another option that worked for me on the 10.10 alternate is to add the following to the boot options:
cdrom-detect/try-usb=true
1000 thanks, you saved my day.
Hi, sry for bumping. Where can i edit the boot options to work with JT’s solution ???
Me again, i try the solution of the OP in his blog entry above, and then the terminal throws a “mounting /dev/loop0 on /cdrom/ failed: device or resource busy” , i tried umount, kill -9. Also the internet communities didn’t get an answer. Anyone got an idea ?
@Jens Are you booting from a Live CD? Then you won’t be able to re-mount the CD, and you won’t be able to unmount it.
If not: what is mounted on /cdrom/ ?