I've been meaning to document this for ages...

My laptop is set up with an encrypted root filesystem using LVM and dmcrypt. It also has a small Debian stable system for recovery purposes (I don't have a CD drive, so if everything goes horribly wrong, I can't just boot from a live CD).

Here's how to set up something similar:

Step 1. Set up the recovery system

Start the Debian lenny (beta) installer as usual. (I originally used etch, but these instructions are for lenny - either should work.)

When you get to "Partition disks", choose "Manual".

Here's the partitioning scheme to use:

main partition for LVM, taking up the whole disk minus 1GB or so. select "Do not use", for now

1GB recovery partition at the end of the disk (this will also be the main system's /boot, since /boot needs to be unencrypted anyway). Use the defaults: ext3 mounted at /.

Finish partitioning and write changes to disk, and wait for the base system to install.

Say yes to installing Grub to the MBR for now (it might be possible to do the install more cleanly by installing Grub to the recovery partition's boot sector instead - I haven't tested that).

Reboot into the freshly installed recovery system and satisfy yourself that it works.

Step 2. Set up the main system

Now boot the Debian installer again. This time it's for your installed system.

At the "Partition disks" stage, choose "Manual" again. Select the main partition and choose "Use as: physical volume for encryption".

Next select "Configure encrypted volumes". Your main partition will now be randomized - this is slow - and some time later you'll be asked for a passphrase. You'll have to type this in at each boot.

Select the contents of the "disk" Encrypted volume (hda1_crypt) and choose Use as: physical volume for LVM.

Now "Configure the Logical Volume Manager" and create a Volume Group. I always use the laptop's hostname as the VG name (this reduces confusion if you ever plug the disk into another machine for disaster recovery).

Create a Logical Volume called swap, the size you want your swap space to be. If you plan to use suspend-to-disk, this needs to be at least as large as your RAM.

Create a Logical Volume called root, for the root filesystem. If you want separate "partitions" for things like /home, now is a good time to create them too; if you want to use my schroot howto, leave some unallocated space in the VG for that.

Set your swap LV to be used as a swap area, and your root LV to be used as ext3 mounted at / . If you wanted extra LVs, set them up too.

Also set your recovery partition to be used as ext3, mounted on /boot, and not reformatted.

It should now look something like this (smcvcrypt is the name of a KVM virtual machine in which I've been testing these instructions, normally you'd have the laptop's hostname there).

Proceed with the installation.

Install Grub to the MBR - this will temporarily make the recovery system unbootable, but shrug never mind. Finish the installation and reboot into your new main system.

Step 3. Make them dual-boot

Within the main system your recovery system is also visible, at /boot. Bind-mount /dev onto /boot/dev, chroot into /boot, and run "update-grub /dev/hda2", where hda2 is the partition where the recovery partition is. Leave the chroot.

Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and put this right at the end:

title Go to recovery system root (hd0,1) chainloader +1

(Replace (hd0,1) with what Grub thinks the recovery partition is - the second number is the partition number starting from 0, so /dev/hda5 would be (hd0,4) and so on.)

Also edit /boot/boot/grub/menu.lst and put this right at the end:

title Back to main system root (hd0) chainloader +1

Also, still in /boot/boot/grub/menu.lst, go to the top of the file and change the colour scheme to something else (I used a red background) to indicate that this boot menu is for the recovery system.

Reboot and try it out. You should now have an extra boot menu option, "Recovery system". Selecting it will switch to the recovery system's boot menu, which has an option to switch back, and so on. Each boot menu also has some entries for kernels, any of which will boot with the appropriate root filesystem (encrypted root for the main system, unencrypted for the recovery system). Success!