2014/10/04 17:48 "Brian Candler" <b.candler@pobox.com>:
>
> In the current Debian installer[1], if you select Guided Partitioning with LVM, the entire volume group is allocated for filesystems and swap.
>
> This means you lose much of the flexibility of LVM (e.g. being able to choose which filesystems to extend later, or being able to create new logical volumes). You could reclaim space later by shrinking one of the filesystems/LVs, but this is relatively painful as it must be done off-line.
>
> This pretty much forces you to do a long-winded manual install if you want to leave space in your volume group, e.g. see[2]
> https://nsrc.org/workshops/2014/wacren-virtualization/raw-attachment/wiki/Agenda/ex-debian-kvm-libvirt.htm#partitioning
>
> The Ubuntu installer fixed this by asking the user what percentage of the volume group to use. This simple feature is a huge improvement.
>
> Is there any chance this feature could be ported into Debian? Has this been discussed before?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Brian Candler.
>
> [1] I've just re-tested this with Jessie Beta 1, and the behaviour is unchanged
>
> [2] This is from a virtualization workshop using Debian as the base platform. We need to leave space in the volume group for creating logical volumes for virtual machines, with Ganeti. Today we have to make students do the whole long-winded process of creating logical volumes for root, swap and /var by hand.
>
Summarizing my interpretation of a number of threads on the subject, it is assumed that any default layout is going to be wrong, so just provide the layout least likely to cause serious problems.
I think the idea is that people who have reason to use LVM should not want to use any default layout.
I think, in my ideal world today, if you filed this as a bug/feature request and I tried to propose a fix (I'm not a dev.), I'd propose a guided partitioning script, starting with the question you suggest, but in reverse -- a target for how much to leave available. Then a couple of questions about intended use, a default layout that "ought to work" for the intended use, and slider controls to adjust the layout.
Having used MacOS partitioning tools, I suspect the primary result of such an approach would be more people who think they know more than they do. But, hey, that's the basic result of every tool we make and let others use. At least, in our free/libre/open world, the source is open and can be learned from, to some extent, by those willing to look.
Joel Rees
It's five in the morning,
I need to go to bed.