Manual patitioner crashes when defining partitions

[Marcb]

Hi all,

Curious if someone else experiences this. I usually partition manually (old habit), and while setting up my partitions with the partitioning software of the installer, it always crashes at some point.

This is not just with this version of Kubuntu, but also with the current public release 10.10 and goes just as much for Ubuntu 10.10 and 10.4 beta 2.

I have tried other distributions, to see if there maybe is something strange about my system, but both suse and fedora do not seem to have a problem at all with my manual partitioning.

First thought: There must be very few people who manually partition.
Second thought: How on earth did they ever install Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

So alternatively I went for the full disk automatic partitioning. Not ideal, but for now I have something I can work with.

Which brings me to the following: in these days of large hard drives (I have two disks of 250Gb available), does it still make sense to partition manually and assign separate partitions to /boot /usr /tmp /var /home and others?
Since I have some servers running on my system, I always thought that it does make a lot of sense to partition manually. But now I was wondering if it is needed at all, aside from potential redundancy motives.

Your thoughts please.

Edit: forgot to mention that I put the bug in launchpad, but cannot find the post just like that.

[Marcb]

Re: Manual patitioner crashes when defining partitions

Link to the launchpad entry: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/766538

[Teunis]

Re: Manual patitioner crashes when defining partitions

I always treat partitioning as a separate task and do it with gparted.
Start up the Live CD, get on the net and install gparted, do your partitioning.

For serious servers there might still be reasons to have partitions for /usr /tmp /var but I limit myself to /, /swap and /home.

[dibl]

Re: Manual patitioner crashes when defining partitions

I always treat partitioning as a separate task and do it with gparted.

Me too. I use a Parted Magic Live USB stick.

I don't know any good reason to put /usr, /tmp, or /var on separate hard drive partitions, for a conventional single user or family computer system. I think those techniques trace back to the days when hard drives were smaller and very expensive, and the objective was to create as little total "overhead" on the hard drive as possible, by splitting the more dynamic directories out into separate partitions from the more static ones.

swap needs its own partition, unless you want to use a swap file (or bravely ignore it, as some do).

/home can be on its own partition, if you like it that way for data security. Personally I like my data even more separated from OS activities, so I install /home with the rest of the OS, and then use symlinks into my /home/user folder for "DOCS", "IMAGES", "MUSIC", etc. That's just a matter of taste.

[molostoff]

Re: Manual patitioner crashes when defining partitions

I use native lvm2 partitioner (instead of plain g/parted or any other) from kubuntu-desktop (or server alternate) cd, works well.

it can see volumes already exists (and does not overwrite it). currently on 4 desktops running - no problems at all.

But the problem with partitioning can be in BIOS disk params and newer kernels from suse and fedora.

[fermier]

Re: Manual patitioner crashes when defining partitions

it always crashes at some point.

You almost had me going there with the "manual partitioning" until I understood what you really meant. Actually, I boot with the installation CD/USB key and then open a terminal session to use fdisk to create my partitions. Yes, yes, I know I date for a time gone by and I am pre-historic... The reason for this is that I do not trust fancy gui programs to do the job correctly, but more importantly they do not tell one what is wrong when something goes wrong. A problem less likely with command line type applications. Hey, this is a long history of distrust, if I do not trust myself, how can I trust someone else!?

Once the partitions are created, I may or may not create file systems/format them manually as well. I then start the installation and yes, I then also select the "manual" partitioning part of the installation, but the only thing that happens there is that I select the partitions that have already been prepared and indicate their respective mount points. Until now (including now) this has never crashed on me. This brings me to my first question. Does the process always crash for you at the same point? And not some variable different point... Also, to avoid the problems mentioned by molostoff, a command line partition preparation may actually tell you that there are other problems. If there are...

Concerning different partitions, like many I prefer to have /home separate and /data as another partition most often on a completely different disk array and FS. Again a question of lack of trust I guess... Sometimes one has no choice like in cases where /boot must be in its own partition, typically in cases where you choose an FS that cannot boot from say GRUB or Lilo. Other practical considerations may also require separate partitions for some parts. It really depends on particular situations and also on choice. Like Dibl said swap always needs its own partition if it is not a file.

Other than trying different tools to perform the partitioning, I have nothing really that can help. It is interesting that different distributions do seem to work for you without crashing at this point.

[Marcb]

Re: Manual patitioner crashes when defining partitions

Thanks for all the replies guys. Looks like it got sorted by the Kubuntu team now.

And yes, I happen to agree to all of you who say that it is best to do the partitioning outside of the installation software. I used to use Slackware in the early days of Linux (really, I am getting old :P), so I am quite familiar with the procedure. I just guess that I have become a bit lazy with all these auto-installers around.

I do use a semi-server setup for a live production environment (got my own small company), so I guess I will stick with my partitioning regime. At least for now. Even though I do agree that these days with the large disk space we have, it does seem a bit pointless to stick with these type of regimes. Only /swap and /home seem to make sense these days.

Anyway, thanks again for the great help, really appreciate it.

Now I'll get back to trying out some other interesting bugs and see if those have been filed yet.

Cheers!

Marc

[wizard10000]

Re: Manual patitioner crashes when defining partitions

I don't know any good reason to put /usr, /tmp, or /var on separate hard drive partitions, for a conventional single user or family computer system. I think those techniques trace back to the days when hard drives were smaller and very expensive, and the objective was to create as little total "overhead" on the hard drive as possible, by splitting the more dynamic directories out into separate partitions from the more static ones.

If I'm building a server I still put /var (or if it's a webserver, /var/log) on a separate partition to keep a runaway process from filling up the root filesystem with logfiles. I've given some thought to symlinking /tmp from a mechanical drive to save wear on my SSD, but I figure I'll be done with the SSD long before I wear the thing out. A hard drive on one of my home systems generally gets replaced after about three years.