Mga6 diskdrake and large partitions

[rodgoslin]

Has the ability to create large partitions (GPT) in diskdrake been incorporated in Mga6?

[doktor5000]

Yes and no. The installer is able to create GPT partitions, but diskdrake is not able to change the partitioning from MBR to GPT or vice-versa as far as I'm aware. I've reported that earlier: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17029

[benmc]

Yes and no

In Cauldron, if installing in UEFI mode, if you choose to "Erase and use whole(entire) disk" , if it had an MBR partition table, the installer will create a GPT and 4 partitions ( /boot/EFI, /, /swap,/home).

If you choose any other option with an MBR disk, it will just create the extended partition and logically divide it up.

If attempting after-install disk partition manipulation, to change from MBR to GPT, currently, you would need a third party app.

[rodgoslin]

Do I read this aright? If I have a new, unused, unformatted 4TB drive in the machine when I come to install Mga6, then the facility is there to partition it as GPT. But, once the machine is setup, then there is no way to setup a new drive, in the same condition as above, for a larger partition than 2TB. In addition, I gather, the installation would have to be a full install, rather than an upgrade.
Ah, benmc, your reply came as I was penning the above, and does seem to have answered some of the questions. The reason I ask, is that I tend to standardise on 4TB disks, at the moment. setup as two (nom) 2TB units. One entire partition is /home, and the other holds the OS partition, swap in another and a second home directory (home2), in another. Since the backup requirement is now more than 2TB, I need another disk as backup, setup as a 4TB unit. I did, in the days of Mga4, setup a 4TB disk in the old way, and was greatly relieved when it actually worked. I had hoped that Mga would have moved on, since then.

[doktor5000]

Do I read this aright? If I have a new, unused, unformatted 4TB drive in the machine when I come to install Mga6, then the facility is there to partition it as GPT. But, once the machine is setup, then there is no way to setup a new drive, in the same condition as above, for a larger partition than 2TB.

No, for empty >2TB disks diskdrake should be able to partition them as GPT, but I can't currently test this.

But is it really such a big deal to install gparted for such one-time tasks ?

Apart from that, I'd suggest using an SDD for / and /home and then only put your actual data on the bigger disks, and symlink those mountpoints to e.g. /home/username/data or /home2 or whatever.

[rodgoslin]

The idea of an SDD interests me, but the increased performance is of little concern to me, but the price is!. Perhaps I've been lucky, and have only lost significant data on one occasion. Most disks I've discarded and broken up, were because they had become too small to be worth keeping.
I'll hang on until Mga6 comes out, Re-build one of my machines and see how I get on. I have walked the parted path, and I didn't find it a particularly pleasant journey, although I did reach my destination. I'm simply looking for a simpler and less fraught way.

[doktor5000]

The idea of an SDD interests me, but the increased performance is of little concern to me, but the price is!.

Well, a 128GB or even a 64GB SSD would be totally sufficient for / and /home itself, and even a decent 250GB SSD should only be like 100$ currently.

And I was referring to gparted, not parted itself. gparted is the GTK gui version.

[benmc]

Once the GPT is created, diskdrake is able to perform the partition manipulation.

So, if you choose to use gparted, just let it to create the GPT.
Be aware that, if you use different disk partition managers, there is a risk of poorly aligned partition boundaries.
This results in small useless partitions between the larger wanted partitions.

Diskdrake is quite smart in this respect, as it very rarely mis-aligns the partition boundaries.

I have seen posts of gparted disk representations on other forums, and often there are small boundary partitions
(and the poster considers this normal, as do the other users).

[rodgoslin]

I installed gparted on my two main machines, and got some very odd returns from them. particularly the error messages on the application being opened.
On this machine the application opened with 'The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears ok, so that will be used' There are five drives on this machine, sda1 /home, sdb6 /, /home2 & swap, sdc1, a USB external backup drive, sdd1, a 2nd generation Drobo (USB), sde1, the other half of the Drobo. All these, bar the USB backup drive, exhibit the small useless unallocated partitions. The GPT part of the error message might be the drive I originally setup as a GPT drive, some years back, which was subsequently re-used. I had thought that I'd used this drive to replace a failed drive in a Drobo-FS, which replaced the original Drobo setup.. Of the two sets exhibiting the small, unallocated partitions, one was setup in the usual way with diskdrake, in the Control Centre, the other setup by the operating system of the Drobo.
Of the other machine, there were a plethora of error messages on starting up gparted. The first was 'can't have overlapping partitions' , with two options, 'cancel' or 'ignore' choosing 'cancel' Gparted went off on a seemingly endless search of the second drive. Choosing 'ignore brought up 'Can't have logical partition outside the extended partition on /dev/sda' choosing 'ignore' again, the next message was 'Can't have overlapping partitions'. Choosing 'ignore' again resulted in 'Can't have a logical partition outside...etc, etc. Choosing 'ignore' gave yet another repeat of the last message again. Choosing 'ignore' once more the attention moved to /dev/sdc and again an indefinite search as of the first instance when I'd chosen 'cancel'
This machine has only three drives, a 4TB drive formatted into two 2TB partitions, A 4TB USB external drive with a MS partitioned disk at nom 4TB, and the 4TB drive I'm interested in formatting as GPT. On the one occasion when I got past the error messages, gparted indicated the same small unallocated partitions, between the main partitions. These drives, like the other machine were setup using diskdrake.
I'm not at all encouraged by all this. I've ordered from Amazon the book 'Manage GParted partitions, by Curtis Gedak' which should be here on Sunday. I might be in for a long read.

[wintpe]

As always, Im backing Doktors reply Rod

you will see such a difference in performance from an SSD over a mechanical drive, and i only use
a 128 gig for my boot, root, swap and home. all my other storage is mounted when i need it.

mga6rc install on my system from a 64 gig sandisk usb, was 15 mins, from boot to reboot and my system is 6 years old.

I have a corsair force 3, which you can still get second hand, theres one on amazon for £50.

but its natural replacement would be https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-Force- ... 120+gb+ssd at £70.

I have a neutron drive as my second drive, but im not as impressed with its performance as I am the force 3, so i stuck with that for my bootdrive.

as for perhaps an answer to your question, I never use any gui tool to partition my disks, its a bad habbit that will bite you on the **** when you get into emergency mode situations.

heres a quick few lines to how to partition a 4tb directly

Code: Select all

#>parted /dev/sda
GNU Parted 3.0
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
#>(parted) mklabel gpt
#>(parted) unit TB
#>(parted) mkpart primary 0 -0
#>(parted) print
Model: ATA WDC WD40EZRX-00S (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 4.00TB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 0.00TB 4.00TB 4.00TB primary
#>(parted) quit


ive put "#>" in front of what you type to differentiate between printed messages.

that will create /dev/sda1 and you can then run

Code: Select all

mkfs.ext4 -L MYBIGDISK /dev/sda1


obviously make sure /dev/sda is the disk you are working on, fdisk -l will still show you basic info even on GPT partitions.

regards peter.

[rodgoslin]

Thanks, Peter. That's quite clear and succinct. I'd already decided to go back to parted for the job and found a link describing just what you have suggested. The book on gparted was not a lot of help, and the plethora of errors, presumably created by diskdrake, was a bit daunting. But since everything seems to be working well, errors not withstanding, I'll go with parted.