Let’s pretend your Linux system won’t boot. Let’s also pretend that you need some piece (or pieces) of data off of that partition.

Not too hard, right?

Well, you’d be right, unless you factor in that it’s an encrpyted LVM partion. Yeah…

1. Boot into Knoppix 5.3.1 (or other live distribution that supports LVM and LUKS)
2. In (or “at”, if you chose to skip X) a terminal:

   sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/ABC_BLOCK_DEVICE

   sudo lvm

   > vgscan

   > vgchange -a y XYZ_LVM_VOLGROUP

   > exit

   sudo mkdir /mnt/fubar

   ls /dev/mapper

   sudo mount /dev/mapper/123_LVM_LOGVOL /mnt/fubar

Assuming all goes smoothly, you can now access the encrypted LVM volume at “/mnt/fubar”.