Re: My experiences with partitioning according to the manual

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Hartmut Goebel <address@hidden> 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’.