[conspire] install, boot, partitioning, LVM? ... (was: Researching used hardware (was: mounting of drive to see ...))

[Michael Paoli]

> From: "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: [conspire] Researching used hardware (was: mounting of  
> drive to see ...)
> Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2019 19:10:23 -0800

> The partitioning screens in Red Hat's 'anaconda' installer (thus in
> CentOS, RHEL, and Fedora) has for many long years been one of the 'blows
> chunks' examples, though it is hardly alone.    The basic problem is
> that it's been coded to override the administrator's choices by
> rewriting the map to be created.  E.g., suddenly you notice that  the
> pending filesystems are in a different order from the one you specified,
> even though you wanted them in a specific order to keep disk seeking to
> a minimum.  Or you specified four primary partitions, but then you see
> that Anadonda has decided only the first should be primary, and the
> other three should be logical drives inside an extended partition.
> Maybe your view is different, but as a sysadmin I want software tools
> that do what I say, not tools that decide to do something different
> because they think I shouldn't want what I said should be done.
>
> And yes, the 'set up LVM even though the administrator didn't ask for
> it' bit is indeed, IIRC, part of the Anaconda partitioner's pattern of
> unacceptable aberrant behaviour.  Since it's unacceptable, my advice is:
> Don't accept it.  Move sideway to /sbin/fdisk or other preferred tool.
> One way to do this is to keep around a best-of-breed live distribution
> whose partitioning tools you like.  I personally prefer the 'No X'
> variant of the Siduction live distro.  Some people like Knoppix for
> this.  Views Differ.[tm]

Yes, they do.  :-)
I do quite like* LVM, however I *do not like* some installer deciding
for me how to set up and configure LVM - or in general the boot,
partitioning and filesystem layouts.

Anaconda?  I know for quite some while, at least some(/many?) distros
have *defaulted* to doing an LVM installation.  This includes
at least Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora and Ubuntu, and likely derivatives
thereof.
My favorite distro (Debian) ... it's installer is so dang nice and
*configurable*, I get things highly the way I want, and despite that
I probably do more Debian installs than any other distro, I don't even
know/remember what its defaults are on partitioning & LVM or not, etc.,
'cause I don't go with the defaults!  :-)
And yes, unlike many other installers/distros, Debian is *very* configurable,
and quite user-friendly - very easy to back up and redo some step(s) if one
finds one started going a path/direction one didn't (quite) want on the
installation/configuration.  There are many other distros/installers
where such configurability, and notably also the user-friendly being able
to go back and re-do specific steps (or even skip steps) ... well, it
makes it darn nice.  Many distros/installers are much less flexible -
coercing (more-or-less) certain (types of) configurations, and having
limited to (near) zero ability to go backwards some bit and redo steps
differently or skip steps.

*And yes, much as I do like LVM, I don't recommend it for all installations,
and perhaps not even most installations.  And in any case, I certainly
can't say that with an LVM installation, I'd generally recommend at all,
"Oh, your distro/installer defaults to LVM - yeah, just go with its
defaults" - nope.  Don't do that - unless you really want to see/know what
its defaults are, or you just don't care and are fine/"okay" with that
(may be quite "good enough" for a newbie install where they're never
going to want to be a sysadmin and just don't care ...
or want their config as generic and default as possible, so the
hordes of newbies will already have their questions about issues with
the default configuration already generally pre-answered for them).