My experiences with partitioning according to the manual

My experiences with partitioning according to the manual

[Hartmut Goebel]

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Hi,

I tried installing GuixSD on a fresh (virtual) machine and found that
the instructions about partitioning the hard-disk are quite confusing.

I'm not sure if it's worth, updating the manual, since the graphical
installer may be here soon. But I want to share my experience to show
that we strongly need the graphical installer :-)

  *

    The first example is of a partitioning program is "cfdisk". I do non
    know this program, tried it and failed terrible. cfdisk seems to
    expect some script (huh?) to execute.

  *

    The first step in the instructions should be to (optionally)
    initialize the partition table (for the case this is a fresh disk).

      o

        Should this a GPT partition table?

      o Which commands to issue?
      o        parted mklabel gpt
  *

    How to align the first partition (with parted)?

  *

    How big should the boot partition be? Mine seems to have been too
    small, so I got warnings when formatting as FAT32.

  * FMPOV for the users it would be easier to have a list of commands to
    issue, like this:

# parted /dev/sda
mkpart primary fat32 1024s 20MB
mkpart primary ext2 20MB 100%
set 1 esp on
name 1 boot
name 2 my-root
quit

# mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
# mkfs.ext4 -L my-root /dev/sda2

My next step will be to try out the graphical installer.

-- 
Regards
Hartmut Goebel

| Hartmut Goebel          | h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com               |
| www.crazy-compilers.com | compilers which you thought are impossible |


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Re: My experiences with partitioning according to the manual

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Hartmut,

Hartmut Goebel <h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com> skribis:

> I'm not sure if it's worth, updating the manual, since the graphical
> installer may be here soon. But I want to share my experience to show
> that we strongly need the graphical installer :-)

That makes sense.  :-)  Thanks for sharing!

>   *
>
>     The first example is of a partitioning program is "cfdisk". I do non
>     know this program, tried it and failed terrible. cfdisk seems to
>     expect some script (huh?) to execute.

“cfdisk” (without any arguments) pops up an ncurses interface that’s
reasonably easy to use, at least for someone already familiar with
partitioning.

What makes you think that it expects a script?

>   *
>
>     The first step in the instructions should be to (optionally)
>     initialize the partition table (for the case this is a fresh disk).
>
>       o
>
>         Should this a GPT partition table?
>
>       o Which commands to issue?
>       o        parted mklabel gpt

There’s probably room for improvement, though we chose to not
(re)document everything about partitioning—it’s something that belongs
elsewhere IMO.

In fact, I tried to revive the “GNU Storage Guide”, which exists at
<https://alioth.debian.org/projects/storage-guide>, but the Debian folks
never managed to grant me access to this thing (!).  See also
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2016-06/msg00127.html>.

At this point we might be better off starting anew…

>   *
>
>     How to align the first partition (with parted)?

I don’t remember having to worry about this.  Did you have troubles?

>   *
>
>     How big should the boot partition be? Mine seems to have been too
>     small, so I got warnings when formatting as FAT32.

I think the recommendation is to have 50+ MiB for /boot/efi.  Marius,
could you confirm?  We should definitely write it down.

>   * FMPOV for the users it would be easier to have a list of commands to
>     issue, like this:
>
> # parted /dev/sda
> mkpart primary fat32 1024s 20MB
> mkpart primary ext2 20MB 100%
> set 1 esp on
> name 1 boot
> name 2 my-root
> quit
>
> # mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1
> # mkfs.ext4 -L my-root /dev/sda2

We don’t have the Parted commands because the manual suggests cfdisk.

I’ve added the ‘mkfs.fat’ command.

Thank you!

Ludo’.

Re: My experiences with partitioning according to the manual

[Hartmut Goebel]

Hi Ludo,

Am 19.09.2017 um 13:47 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
> “cfdisk” (without any arguments) pops up an ncurses interface that’s
> reasonably easy to use, at least for someone already familiar with
> partitioning.
>
> What makes you think that it expects a script?

It asked me for a script. I just tried again and it did not ̣so probably
I did something wrong.

Nevertheless I had trouble using cfdisk, as I wrote to Danny this
morning (as part of my feedback on the installer). Most important:
cfdisk offers too many and non-obvious options for partition types. The
manual ought to state which to use – or if this can be ignored since
mkfs will set the correct type anyway (it if does, as I mean to have seen).

> There’s probably room for improvement, though we chose to not
> (re)document everything about partitioning—it’s something that belongs
> elsewhere IMO.

This makes sense. What about linking to the "GNU storage guide" then?
>
>>   * How to align the first partition (with parted)?
> I don’t remember having to worry about this.  Did you have troubles?

Yes, when using parted and I wanted to add a partition starting at
sector 0. cfdisk did not ask for a start and aligned it automatically.

> We don’t have the Parted commands because the manual suggests cfdisk. 

That's okay, but the manual mentions parted to set the efi flag. And
since I had trouble with cfdisk, I used parted.

> I’ve added the ‘mkfs.fat’ command.
Thanks.

-- 
Regards
Hartmut Goebel

| Hartmut Goebel          | h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com               |
| www.crazy-compilers.com | compilers which you thought are impossible |

Re: My experiences with partitioning according to the manual

[Marius Bakke]

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Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

>>     How big should the boot partition be? Mine seems to have been too
>>     small, so I got warnings when formatting as FAT32.
>
> I think the recommendation is to have 50+ MiB for /boot/efi.  Marius,
> could you confirm?  We should definitely write it down.

IIRC "documentation" recommends something on the order of 500MiB, but I
haven't had problems with sizes as small as 20MiB and FAT16.

Not sure what to recommend, grub only requires ~125KiB!

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Re: My experiences with partitioning according to the manual

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Hartmut Goebel <h.goebel@crazy-compilers.com> skribis:

> Am 19.09.2017 um 13:47 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
>> “cfdisk” (without any arguments) pops up an ncurses interface that’s
>> reasonably easy to use, at least for someone already familiar with
>> partitioning.
>>
>> What makes you think that it expects a script?
>
> It asked me for a script. I just tried again and it did not ̣so probably
> I did something wrong.
>
> Nevertheless I had trouble using cfdisk, as I wrote to Danny this
> morning (as part of my feedback on the installer). Most important:
> cfdisk offers too many and non-obvious options for partition types. The
> manual ought to state which to use – or if this can be ignored since
> mkfs will set the correct type anyway (it if does, as I mean to have seen).

I’m not saying cfdisk has a perfect UI, but the manual does say that the
user has to be somewhat familiar with the topic.  :-)

I think it’s a reasonable assumption at this point, though we should
eventually work towards making it easier for people coming to GNU/Linux
altogether in the future.

>> There’s probably room for improvement, though we chose to not
>> (re)document everything about partitioning—it’s something that belongs
>> elsewhere IMO.
>
> This makes sense. What about linking to the "GNU storage guide" then?

As I wrote, that thing doesn’t really exist (actually it’s jailed on
alioth.debian.org.)  Help welcome!

>>>   * How to align the first partition (with parted)?
>> I don’t remember having to worry about this.  Did you have troubles?
>
> Yes, when using parted and I wanted to add a partition starting at
> sector 0. cfdisk did not ask for a start and aligned it automatically.

So use ‘cfdisk’.  :-)

>> We don’t have the Parted commands because the manual suggests cfdisk. 
>
> That's okay, but the manual mentions parted to set the efi flag. And
> since I had trouble with cfdisk, I used parted.

Yeah, understood.

I think ‘cfdisk’ is the best we can do currently when it comes to
partitioning, but I’m happy if you have ideas on how to improve the
instructions.

Thanks,
Ludo’.