> I got a howto online with the steps to configure the last version of
> Ubuntu for LUKS LVM. One of the things it tells you to do is a "dd
> /dev/urandom /dev/sda5" to fill the LVM group with random noise before
> creating the groups. I have started this but I'm only getting 1.7MBps so
> it's going to take nearly 3 days to complete on a 300GB partition!
I wouldn't bother with that step. Not having random stuff across your
partition will probably make it a little easier for an experienced
investigator to find the bits that make up your filesystem - but you're
not relying on that for security, are you?
> Is there a better way of doing this please? FC10 formatted in
> minutes/hours, not days.
But you're not doing the same thing. You're filling the disk with random
noise before creating a filesystem over the top of that. You'll get
different run times because you're doing different jobs...
