How to mount an old encrypted disk on Ubuntu

Solution 1:

These commands work with newest Ubuntu 16.04 for disk created with default cryptsetup values on Ubuntu 8.04:

cryptsetup open /dev/sdb1 usbdisk --type plain -c aes-cbc-plain
mount /dev/mapper/usbdisk /mnt

Removing:

umount /mnt
cryptsetup close usbdisk

Solution 2:

I found a solution:

losetup /dev/loop1 /dev/sdb1 
cryptsetup --hash ripemd160:20 --cipher twofish-cbc-null --key-size 192 create secret_img /dev/loop1
mount /dev/mapper/secret_img /media/mountpoint

I reactivated an old laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 installed on which I solved this issue once, with the help of the Internet back then. Apparently the Internet did not keep the information on how to solve this long enough, so I was lucky to have that old hardware still up and running :) And the code still works on a current Ubuntu 12.04.