Well, an update.
[...] I was put in touch with one of the course tutors.
I copied my first post through to him, and in about 10 minutes and two emails of plain, easy language, it was fixed. I didn't write down the exact commands as I was otherwise focused, but I do recall that we had to open the 'crypt tab' on the encrypted drive first, get the volumes name, then close it and re-open again with crypt setup but using this name. this seemed to resolve the error message I was having, and everything went smoothly from there, re-installing grub then initramfs.
From the list: "This is probably easier in a live discussion on IRC or Matrix. There's just too much back and forth required."
The fact that this was so easy and close to my original steps, makes me suspicious that people here knew all along,
They do know, but you failed to provide the level of detail needed to understand your exact situation, which is why
the one-on-one communication is so important.
but were rather choosing to withhold information or present it cryptically to prove some kindof of 'point', as if I deserve to be punished for not knowing enough answer a question before I even ask it. The tutor himself alluded to this in his email:
"They're very much like Arch in this way - a whole lot of ego tied up in "their" software, and the tone of your thread is pretty typical of them. mailing lists tend to be particularly bad, a lot of self-appointed 'senior' users who gatekeep pretty hard.
There's been a pretty sus push lately on various socials etc about how 'Fedora is the new Ubuntu' but honestly we want neither being used by students, for different reasons (i pushed for distributing standardized environments but....).
You should not put much stock in those socials. I work with many users new to linux (because my field relies on
applications that are not fully functional on Windows) and recommend they start by looking around their institution
to see what others are using so they can get that one-on-one help if they get into difficulties.
Neither are really stable and are really just enterprises using the public for free beta testing. fedora esp isn't well tested and is not fit at all for daily driving by average/new users (as we're seeing!) but also the community is absolutely not one we want students having to engage with. ever.
The tradeoff for the beta testing is that developers and integrators get an early look at changes that may appear in long-term
support or "stable" releases.
[Redacted] and I'll probably touch on this in the first tute - looks like the first week is just going to be setting up environments anyway so we'll just work that into the CLO's but either way we'll get you sorted "
I have taught practical sessions in workshops for select groups of PhD researchers where some applications required
(Ubuntu) linux. Each student was provided a laptop, so we did not have to deal with diverse hardware. We found it
important to spend the first two afternoons on some linux basics and then have students install linux (vm or dual boot
depending on their individual requirements).
So - in the end, I *did* go with a fresh installation - Debian! But to perhaps fix what is clearly a much larger, different problem.
Debian has stable and unstable releases. Debian unstable and Fedora both introduce new stuff, but make different
choices.
I'm fairly sure this won't go down well, but that itself is rather the issue here. Nonetheless, I do certainly want to close this record in case anyone else comes looking to solve a similar problem, but also making it clear the impact your collective conduct has had, whether you can admit it or not.
I won't say 'thanks' but I will say: You've certainly all left an impression.
I'm glad you got your course requirement sorted out. Having seen the stress felt by students when a course nelects to
support the transition to linux, I can understand your frustration. There are students who do better when new stuff is
introduced gently, and the "move fast and break things" students who will encounter setbacks. Education sould
encourage each type of student to learn when it is better to move fast and when to avoid breaking things.