Partitioning a new installation

[a_freed_man]

I just got a new 1TB ssd for my laptop and am trying to decide how to partition the space and using which filesystems.

A search of the forum for btrfs revealed the MX installer doesn't support subvolumes. I'm new to btrfs, but as I understand it subvolumes are a requirement for snapshots and volume management.

I read an interesting article from a guy using LUKS and btrfs for a multiboot system where the space for each OS (all except /boot which he creates a separate partition for each OS) is shared. I once was a big fan of multibooting, but now I prefer VMs. I considered LVM, but believe btrfs is a better way to go, and provides all the LVM functionality I am interested in.

In thinking about how I use my disk space, /home is the majority of my current 512GB ssd. Of that the biggest space consumers are virtual box VMs and videos. This is what I'd like to do:

The first partitions (/efi, /, /boot) are not encrypted:
50GB / which includes /boot and 8GB swap file. /efi partition would also come from this space (not encrypted)
200GB /Backup for mounting subvolume snapshots for transfer to USB storage (unallocated space)

The rest of the drive space encrypted with LUKS, partitioned with btrfs, with the following subvolumes:
50GB /Music
200GB /Videos-Static
100GB /Videos-Dynamic
100GB /Home includes code dev, documents
200GB /VMs1
100GB /VMs2

My question to those in this community using btrfs with MX is do you use subvolumes and what was your strategy at install time? Did you later come in and manually create subvolumes? What advice do you have for implementing the above strategy?

[Pierre]

why BTRFS ? why not the usual EXT4 ?


do you really need to break up, into so many Data Areas ?
- - the default System, already has Music / Videos / Documents etc
is that not enough, to store your stuff ?.

my 2Tb HDD is split into three partitions, with the third partition, as an separate Data Backup, area . .

[Buck Fankers]

why BTRFS ? why not the usual EXT4 ?

Asking why, is pointless in this case. Why do you want to get strawberry ice cream if i like chocolate so much better?!?

I've read both articles, and if I wouldn't be such noob in Linux world, I would try it myself. BTRFS is interesting because of the way, how snapshots are created, managed...

So question is, if someone did it and what is experience with it. Also, since article is several years old, does all steps still apply?

[Adrian]

The installer unfortunately doesn't support subvolumes, that might be a project for the next release. While it supports installing on Btrfs it doesn't allow you to pick subvolumes. Maybe partitioning in advance by hand and mounting the subvolumes befoe starting the installer would work if you choose not to format root and /home -- not sure if the dropdown for partitions would work because the code used to populate them might not understand what is going on with the subvolumes.

[Buck Fankers]

While it supports installing on Btrfs it doesn't allow you to pick subvolumes.

OK good to know, so thanks from me also, although I'm not OP.

[a_freed_man]

It's late, so this will be short. Thanks for the replies btw.

I achieved most of what I asked about in the OP, and it was relatively easy. As to why I want to use btrfs it is mainly for the volume management features which includes snapshots, quotas and version history. Here are the basic steps. As noted by Adrian above, you will need to partition the drive first.

1. Partition drive:
- 550MB EFI (FAT32)
- 2GB boot (ext4)
- 45GB root (btrfs)
- 20GB swap
> the rest of the drive for home (btrfs)

2. Run installer with custom partitioning
- Encrypt all but EFI partition

3. After installer completes:
- Reboot & login as root
- mkdir /volumes
- Edit /etc/fstab and change mount point from /home to /volumes
- Reboot

4. Create the home subvolume
- Login as root again
- rmdir /home
- cd /volumes
- btrfs subvolume create Accounts
- pushd /
- ln -s /volumes/Accounts home
- popd
- mv all user folders created using installer (they're in /volumes now) to /home/.

5. BASE INSTALLATION COMPLETE; you can now log out as root and login to a user account

6. Create additional subvolumes as desired under /volumes, set appropriate subvolume quotas

7. Restore VMs, Video, Music etc into new subvolumes created in the /volumes folder

[Buck Fankers]

I achieved most of what I asked about in the OP, and it was relatively easy.

I'm glad it is working for you!

[sebas_I]

I achieved most of what I asked about in the OP, and it was relatively easy. As to why I want to use btrfs it is mainly for the volume management features which includes snapshots, quotas and version history. Here are the basic steps. As noted by

Hi everyone
Cool that you achieved it.
I'm trying to do something similar. How may I login as root? I just can login as the user created in the installation.
Would it be the same to do a sudo su to make the directories? Then I wouldn't need to login as root
Was it necessary to encrypt the drives to do this? or was something else that made you take that decision? I have never encrypted my drives,

[SwampRabbit]

Hi everyone
Cool that you achieved it.
I'm trying to do something similar. How may I login as root? I just can login as the user created in the installation.
Would it be the same to do a sudo su to make the directories? Then I wouldn't need to login as root
Was it necessary to encrypt the drives to do this? or was something else that made you take that decision? I have never encrypted my drives,

You don't have t encrypt the drives unless you have something you really need to protect. I typically only encrypt personal data drives and drives in laptops only.

I wouldn't encrypt movies (unless it is home/self made movies), music, and VMs... its a waste to encrypt this sort of stuff.
I'm personally not worried if someone stole all my Brittney Spears music.

You can do system snapshots with Timeshift, its really easy to install and use (newest version is in MX Package Installer > MX Test Repo tab.
You can set quotas lots of different ways on folders, partitions, and drives in Linux without doing all that work.

[sebas_I]

Thanks! I'll search how to do quotas.