Dev1 Galaxy Forum / When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (pcalvert) — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 17:02:23 +0000

I prefer to partition the drive manually using cfdisk and/or gparted. However, now that I am planning to start encrypting everything except /boot, I am not sure that partitioning everything manually will work anymore.

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (GlennW) — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 23:26:37 +0000

Hi, I often partition drives myself with gparted.

I set a small bios (grub2 core.img) between 8 and 100Mb (non-EFI, unsigned kernel)
/(root), usr, var, tmp, swap & home.

Almost all of my personal(non-system) files/data are on a separate harddrive that I setup with links (ln -s) back to the /home/local directory.
Like... documents, music, video, bin (bash scripts) & build (directions and configs). Including a partiton for system backups, and home backup too on a separate partition.
This way I may access those files from any OS, most of the time.

I have tried the installer "automatically set up partitions" to give me an idea of the minimum sizes currently being used. But usually find it unsatisfactory.

My system is setup for daily-drive entertainment system, not a webserver or multi user.

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (Dutch_Master) — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 13:36:50 +0000

I'm using the partitioning tool of the installer (which under the hood is gparted anyway ) to manually set partitions for /, /boot, /usr, /etc, /var, /tmp and /home. By limiting the size of these directories any rogue process triggered to fill up as much space as possible cannot make the system unstable or even unbootable.

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (Camtaf) — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 13:10:08 +0000

That was my thinking. It must be something with the HP Prodesk then, some other O/S do install OK, but I was wanting Devuan, of course.

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (rolfie) — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 09:47:28 +0000

nvme drives are no different from spinning rust or SSDs. On some older mainboards the bios must be prepared to support nmve's.

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (Camtaf) — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 09:31:11 +0000

I manually set partition sizes myself, if the distro installer doesn't allow for this, I will partition disk before installing.

Root & Home usually enough for me.

Whilst talking installing, does Devuan install to NVME drives (?), because I couldn't get Daedalus to install to an HP Prodesk i5 fitted with one.

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (PedroReina) — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 08:44:03 +0000

For me, it depends on the previous status of the target drive. If it is empty, like in a brand new one, I start the installer in expert mode and do a manual partitioning. But if the drive already have same content (for instance, an undesired operating system), I start a live system and use gparted to wipe out previous partitioning and maybe I do the desired one. In either case, sometimes a manual tweak could be necessary.

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (Altoid) — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 19:09:44 +0000

Hello:

golinux wrote:

... don't do an installation often ...

My Devuan box started off as Jesse and is now Daedalus.
Only new installations I have done since are on VMs, a 1000HE and a RPi.

golinux wrote:

... start with creating the partitions with gparted.

Same here, since my very first Linux. iirc it was Ubuntu.

golinux wrote:

... on bios and spinning rust here.

That too, save for the small SSD I adopted a few years ago as a boot/system/home drive with everything backed up daily with BackInTime+Timeshift and Clonezilla drive images once a week.

Best,

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (rolfie) — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 18:53:30 +0000

I do my partitioning before installation with gparted live. In a VM I use the installer but manual partitioning. I do not like the automatisms build in, in my eyes they are outdated in terms to size allowed. Usually too little. I want to determine size, order etc. myself based on a long time experience.

I have done that since the first tools came up on DOS like Partition Magic.

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (greenjeans) — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 18:05:20 +0000

Still on bios and spinning rust here.

Ditto. And still winning, haven't had to buy a new machine since 2014.

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (golinux) — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 17:49:54 +0000

I don't do an installation often but when I do I start with creating the partitions with gparted. Still on bios and spinning rust here.

Re: When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (Andre4freedom) — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 17:19:40 +0000

It's exactly what I do. Even using gparted or good old fdisk.
I don't want an installer that throws everything into root.
I need always:
1. a boot or efi partition
2. a system partition (/root)
3. a swap partition
4. a /home partition
5. some special partitions like /srv, or /av.
And mostly in ext4. excluding efi or swap. Sometimes xfs for very large files like video etc.
But not everybody sees it the same way.
Cheers

When installing a system, do you manually partition first?

dummy@example.com (greenjeans) — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 17:09:36 +0000

Curious as to what most folks do, wish we could add a poll on this forum.

So when installing a new system on your machine, do you let the installer program do the partitioning, or do you do it before firing up the installer using Gparted or some other method?

For myself, I always use Gparted first, so I know everything is done right before I attempt to install.