• I think I had an encrypted swap partition, because I chose to encrypt my home directory during the installation. I believe that's what the line with /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 ... in my /etc/fstab is all about.

• I did something to bork my swap because on the next boot, I got a message (paraphrased):

  The disk drive for /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 is not ready yet or not present. Wait to continue. Press S to skip or M to manually recover.

  (As a side note, pressing S or M seemed to do nothing different from just waiting.)

• Here's what I've tried:

  1. This tutorial on how to fix the swap partition not mounting. However, in the above, the mkswap command fails because the device is busy.
  2. So I booted from a live USB, ran GParted to reformat the swap partition (which showed up as an unknown fs type), and chrooted into the broken system to try that tutorial again. I also adjusted /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume and /etc/fstab to reflect the new UUID generated from formatting the partition as a swap. That still didn't work; instead of /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 not present, "The disk drive with UUID=[swap partition's UUID] is not ready yet or not present..."
  3. So I decided to start afresh as though I never had created a swap partition in the first place. From the Live USB, I deleted the swap partition altogether (which, again showed up in GParted as an unknown fs type), removed the swap and cryptswap entries in /etc/fstab as well as removed /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume and /etc/crypttab. At this point the main system shouldn't be considered broken because there is no swap partition and no instructions to mount one, right? I didn't get any errors during startup. I followed the same instructions to create and encrypt the swap partition, starting with creating a partition for the swap, though I think fdisk said a reboot was necessary to see changes.

• I was confident the 3rd process above would work, but the problem yet persists.

• Some relevant info (/dev/sda8 is the swap partition):

  • /etc/fstab file:

    # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
    #
    # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
    # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
    # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
    #
    # <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
    proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
    # / was on /dev/sda6 during installation
    UUID=4c11e82c-5fe9-49d5-92d9-cdaa6865c991 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
    # /boot was on /dev/sda5 during installation
    UUID=4031413e-e89f-49a9-b54c-e887286bb15e /boot           ext4    defaults        0       2
    # /home was on /dev/sda7 during installation
    UUID=d5bbfc6f-482a-464e-9f26-fd213230ae84 /home           ext4    defaults        0       2
    # swap was on /dev/sda8 during installation
    UUID=5da2c720-8787-4332-9317-7d96cf1e9b80 none            swap    sw              0       0
    /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 none swap sw 0 0
    

  • output of sudo mount:

    /dev/sda6 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
    proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
    sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
    none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
    none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
    none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
    udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
    devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
    tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
    none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
    none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
    /dev/sda5 on /boot type ext4 (rw)
    /dev/sda7 on /home type ext4 (rw)
    /home/undisclosed/.Private on /home/undisclosed type ecryptfs (ecryptfs_check_dev_ruid,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_unlink_sigs,ecryptfs_sig=cbae1771abd34009,ecryptfs_fnek_sig=7cefe2f59aab8e58)
    gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/undisclosed/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=undisclosed)
    

  • output of sudo blkid (note that /dev/sda8 is missing):

    /dev/sda1: LABEL="SYSTEM" UUID="960490E80490CC9D" TYPE="ntfs" 
    /dev/sda2: UUID="D4043140043126C0" TYPE="ntfs" 
    /dev/sda3: LABEL="Shared" UUID="80F613E1F613D5EE" TYPE="ntfs" 
    /dev/sda5: UUID="4031413e-e89f-49a9-b54c-e887286bb15e" TYPE="ext4" 
    /dev/sda6: UUID="4c11e82c-5fe9-49d5-92d9-cdaa6865c991" TYPE="ext4" 
    /dev/sda7: UUID="d5bbfc6f-482a-464e-9f26-fd213230ae84" TYPE="ext4" 
    /dev/mapper/cryptswap1: UUID="41fa147a-3e2c-4e61-b29b-3f240fffbba0" TYPE="swap" 
    

  • output of sudo fdisk -l:

    Disk /dev/mapper/cryptswap1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
    
    Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
    255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
    Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
    Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    Disk identifier: 0xdec3fed2
    
       Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
    /dev/sda1   *        2048      409599      203776    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
    /dev/sda2          409600   210135039   104862720    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
    /dev/sda3       210135040   415422463   102643712    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
    /dev/sda4       415424510   625141759   104858625    5  Extended
    /dev/sda5       415424512   415922175      248832   83  Linux
    /dev/sda6       415924224   515921919    49998848   83  Linux
    /dev/sda7       515923968   621389823    52732928   83  Linux
    /dev/sda8       621391872   625141759     1874944   82  Linux swap / Solaris
    
    Disk /dev/mapper/cryptswap1: 1919 MB, 1919942656 bytes
    255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 233 cylinders, total 3749888 sectors
    Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
    Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    Disk identifier: 0xaf5321b5
    

  • /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume file:

    RESUME=UUID=5da2c720-8787-4332-9317-7d96cf1e9b80
    

  • /etc/crypttab file:

    cryptswap1 /dev/sda8 /dev/urandom swap,cipher=aes-cbc-essiv:sha256
    

  • output of sudo swapon -as:

    Filename                Type        Size    Used    Priority
    /dev/mapper/cryptswap1                  partition   1874940 0   -1
    

  • output of sudo free -m:

                 total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
    Mem:          1476       1296        179          0         35        671
    -/+ buffers/cache:        590        886
    Swap:         1830          0       1830
    

So, how can this be fixed?