I've had problems setting up the manual partitioning in a way that was acceptable to the installer too. My only guess is they installer team figure if you are going to do manual installation, then you know which partitions are required, how they need their flags set, what size to make each and which file system types are required.
With Lubuntu a few days ago, I tried to manually setup LVM and failed. Couldn't figure out the requirements to get booting and LVM with the minimal number of partitions created. Eventually, I gave up (it was just a toy install) and did the "next-->next-->next-->next-->next-->next-->next-->next-->" install using all defaults.
In previous installs, I setup a number of partitions, 2 that I don't really know if they are required, but wasting 1MB for them wasn't a big deal and since I'm using GPT, there's no 4 primary partition limitation that used to get in the way before. I will post the partitions I've used that worked in 20.04.
Code:
# Set some variables to be used below:
export DEV=/dev/sda
# Change sizes below for your needs
export SZ_EFI="50M"
export SZ_BOOT="700M"
export SZ_root="10G" # for servers - can be expanded later
export SZ_root="35G" # for desktops - can be expanded later
export SZ_home="10G" # for desktops - can be expanded later
export SZ_swap="1G" # for servers
export SZ_swap="4.1G" # for desktops
export SZ_var="2G" # for servers (no snaps) - can be expanded later
export SZ_var="10G" # for desktops - can be expanded later
export SZ_tmp="2G" # May need to increase this if lots of snaps are used or downloads go to /tmp/
# the volume group name - should be unique. Handy if it is unique across ALL computers you manage.
export VG_NAME=vg00
# Clear and create the partitions
sgdisk --clear $DEV # create fresh GPT partition table on the device
sgdisk --new=1:0:+1M --typecode=0:ef02 --change-name=0:GRUB $DEV # BIOS Boot Partition (legacy)
sgdisk --new=2:0:+${SZ_EFI} --typecode=0:ef00 --change-name=0:EFI-SP $DEV # for /boot/efi
sgdisk --new=3:0:+${SZ_BOOT} --typecode=0:8300 --change-name=0:boot $DEV # for /boot
sgdisk --largest-new=4 --typecode=0:8e00 --change-name=0:LVM $DEV # for the LVM PV/VG and multiple LVs
sgdisk --typecode=1:ef02 --typecode=2:ef00 --typecode=3:8300 --typecode=4:8e00 $DEV
sgdisk --change-name=1:GRUB --change-name=2:EFI-SP --change-name=3:boot \
--change-name=4:LVM $DEV
sgdisk --hybrid 1:2:3:4 $DEV
sgdisk --print $DEV
# Create the LVM objects - PV, VG, and multiple LVs.
pvcreate ${DEV}4
vgcreate ${VG_NAME} ${DEV}4
lvcreate -L ${SZ_swap} -n swap ${VG_NAME}
lvcreate -L ${SZ_root} -n root ${VG_NAME}
lvcreate -L ${SZ_var} -n var ${VG_NAME}
lvcreate -L ${SZ_tmp} -n tmp ${VG_NAME}
lvcreate -L ${SZ_home} -n home ${VG_NAME}
lvscan
# time to format with file systems
mkfs -t ext2 ${DEV}1 # not sure what this is about.
mkfs -t vfat ${DEV}2 # /boot/efi
mkfs -t ext2 ${DEV}3 # /boot
mkswap /dev/${VG_NAME}/swap # swap (this was activated by the installer)
mkfs -t ext4 /dev/${VG_NAME}/root # /
e2label /dev/${VG_NAME}/root root
mkfs -t ext4 /dev/${VG_NAME}/home # /home
e2label /dev/${VG_NAME}/home home
mkfs -t ext4 /dev/${VG_NAME}/var # /var
e2label /dev/${VG_NAME}/var var
mkfs -t ext4 /dev/${VG_NAME}/tmp # /tmp
e2label /dev/${VG_NAME}/tmp tmp
I use these mount options for the specific file systems:
Code:
# Mount options
/home nodev,nosuid
/tmp nodev,nosuid,noexec
/var nodev,nosuid,noexec
So, you can set the sizes to what you like. I'm using LVM, all the PV, VG and LV stuff is for LVM.
I use that script as the base, then slightly modify it, usually just the sizes, for each system as needed. I run it after starting the installer, but before getting to the "Do Something Else" option by switching to a different non-GUI console screen in the installer, installing ssh and pulling the base script over to the installation environment. If I'm in the "Try Ubuntu" mode, this can be done using a graphical environment.
From parted -l, here's the partitions created by the sgdisk commands:
Code:
Model: Samsung SSD 980 1TB (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 2097kB 1049kB ext2 GRUB bios_grub
2 2097kB 54.5MB 52.4MB fat16 EFI-SP boot, esp
3 54.5MB 789MB 734MB ext4 boot
4 789MB 1000GB 999GB LVM lvm
Inside the installer, I just need to connect the mount location to the newly created partitions and LVs, then figure out which absolutely must allow the installer to re-format and check that box when necessary. The resulting layout looks like this:
Code:
NAME TYPE FSTYPE SIZE FSAVAIL FSUSE% LABEL MOUNTPOINT
nvme0n1 disk 931.5G
├─nvme0n1p1 part ext2 1M
├─nvme0n1p2 part vfat 50M 43.9M 12% /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p3 part ext4 700M 339.8M 42% /boot
└─nvme0n1p4 part LVM2_member 930.8G
├─vg01-swap01 lvm swap 4.1G [SWAP]
├─vg01-root01 lvm ext4 35G 25G 22% /
├─vg01-var01 lvm ext4 20G 14G 23% /var
├─vg01-tmp01 lvm ext4 4G 3.6G 1% tmp01 /tmp
└─vg01-home01 lvm ext4 20G 9.2G 48% home01 /home
Obviously, there are slight differences in sizes and names than the script would create. You can also see that the LVM partition is 930GB, but I'm using less than 200GB of that total space. LVM allows growing LVs while the file system is active and busy, should that be needed. Having most of the VG unused provides all sorts of flexibility. I actually have other LVs that I removed from the output for virtual machines and linux containers. Felt that showing those in the output above when they aren't in the script anywhere could be confusing for some people, especially if they aren't used to using LVM at all.
I wish Canonical would just steal the disk layout tool from the CentOS installer from 10 yrs ago for the "do something else" choice. That was very capable and clear.
Adv Reply
Originally Posted by MAFoElffen
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