Install /boot on a separate medium

cayce · April 29, 2023, 6:16pm

…

Here you listed 2 partitions to be used as mount points for / (root).

I don’t mean to discourage or offend you but, with your skill set, I think you’re setting yourself up for disaster down the line.

Even for the “pros” as one user likes to fantasize about; dual-booting a franken-sys is a bad idea IMO.

My $0.02? Get another system for your SUSE install and live long & prosper.

If both systems are “dev” and the intent is to learn, for SURE, have at it! Just don’t ever bother to invest any data within.

Erica.vH · April 29, 2023, 6:26pm

Actually, it’S not 2 partitons for root, it’S the same but spread over 2 disks,
Hence me asking if I should go with a LVM first before LUKS
The USB stick is for boot (computer starts withOUT the stick goes straight to SUSE)
The NVMe0 is the smaller drive, cheaper, hence me using it for the “heavy R/W” swap and tmp
The NVMe1 and NVMe2 drives are for root (spread through) and /home
so the

[quote=“cayce, post:21, topic:18188, full:true”]

is actually 1 partition … or rather 1 LVM ?

If I go with full auto install, selecting these 2 drives NVMe1 and NVMe2 is no problem for the installer, it does the /root spread over “naturally”

cayce · April 29, 2023, 6:29pm

Do you mean a RAID configuration?

I had thought that this might be what you were after but, because the sizes don’t match, I didn’t (still don’t) understand how you would achieve such as specified.

Erica.vH · April 29, 2023, 6:35pm

Nope, not a RAID, it doesn’t work well (BIOS RAID)

That’s why I talk about LVM

cayce · April 29, 2023, 7:04pm

Have you reviewed the link I shared?

Erica.vH · April 29, 2023, 9:16pm

ABout the software RAID ?
I just did.
And I see that they are using Logical Volume + RAID,
While Qubes use only Logical Volume without RAID
Or do they … ?
OK, I’m leaving this SUSE session to go back to Qubes (so I won’t be able to post for a while)
I’m going to re-do Qubes auto install and get the result back here as the more I ask question, the more question I have

Erica.vH · April 29, 2023, 11:05pm

ok, so …
Auto install, selecting full 2 NVMe1 and NVMe2

Clear:
/dev/NVMe1n1p1 /boot/efi (I want it as sda/boot/efi)
/dev/NVMe1n1p2 /boot (I want it as sda/boot)
Crypted:
/dev/NVMe1n1p3 LVM2 pv qubes_dom0
/dev/NVMe2n1p1 LVM2 pv qubes_dom0
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
So the Qubes install does spread on two disks, but IDK how to check how it goes with it, does it creates an LVM first and then LUKS, or does it creates the two partitions and then LUKS,
=> Anyone know what cmd I have to do to check if Qubes install did a LV RAID ? **

But if it creates two partition and then LUKS and then LV, I’m still stuck with not knowing how to direct/force specific volume to specific partition like swap on NVMe0n1p13

PS: The reason I want to force a /home on a specific partition is to be able to direct all qubes’ /home in there, so as to keep them in case (very probable) I have to reinstall Qubes-os

but now that I think twice … is it even possible in Qubes-os to determine where each qubes’/home is saved ? (and I don’t mean backup)

I don't want anything too exotic here, I just want to do what Qubes-os install does, but manually with some specific partitions for swap and tmp

Erica.vH · April 30, 2023, 2:44pm

So … (WIP getting closer to final answer)

launch Qubes-os instal
do the language, location, keyboard, users, etc …
Ctril-Alt-F2,

First, partitionning.
– To view all the partitions currently on your system, we use the following command.

sudo fdisk -l

Output:

Disk /dev/sda: 1,9 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: nal USB 3.0 
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0001cca3

Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1        2048 976771071 976769024 0,8G fat32
/dev/sda2   2048 976771071 976769024 1,1G 83 Linux

Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 512 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 960 EVO 512GB           
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 6907D1B3-B3AB-7E43-AD20-0707A656A1B5

Device            Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1         2048   1050623   1048576   1G EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2   1050624  34605055  33554432  2G 83 Linux
/dev/nvme0n1p3  etc, etc ...

Disk /dev/nvme1n1: 1800 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 960 EVO 2000TB               
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 6907D1B3-B3AB-7E43-AD20-0707A656A1B5

Device            Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
none

Disk /dev/nvme2n1: 1800 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 960 EVO 2000TB               
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 6907D1B3-B3AB-7E43-AD20-0707A656A1B5

Device            Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
none

– Then select the disk

sudo fdisk [disk path]

Example: sudo fdisk /dev/NVMe0n1
Then fdisk will wait for you to enter a command:

comand (m for help):

– I don’t need to fdisk: g as my disks are already GPT.
– Then to create a new partition, we use the command ‘n’. This will prompt you to specify the type of partition which you wish to create.
If you wish to create a logical partition, choose ‘l’. Alternatively, you can choose ‘p’ for a primary partition.

command (m for help): n
(then) - p

This is what the output will look like:

Then
Run the w command to save your changes:

The command will exit the fdisk menu and write the table to the disc.

The following step is to make new partitions.

sudo mkfs.ext4 -F /dev/nvme0n1p13
sudo mkfs.ext4 -F /dev/nvme0n1p14

Output

mke2fs 1.45.5 (07-Jan-2020)
Creating filesystem with 51928145 4k blocks and 12984320 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 63a3457e-c3a1-43f4-a0e6-01a7dbe7dfed
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
	32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 
	4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872

Allocating group tables: done                            
Writing inode tables: done                            
Creating journal (262144 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

Type in all the "cryptsetup -v -type luks2 --hash … " for each partition,
open each luks,
Ctrl-Alt-F6 back to the install GUI
Assign a mount point as desired
finish Qubes-os install
then amend the /etc/crypttab to get all the LUKS to decrypt in a single entry

Many thks to all, especially @cayce for their insight !

Erica.vH · May 1, 2023, 9:13pm

Damned !
DNF error (fatal): error unpacking package Xen-hypervisor-2001
The installation will abort

cayce · May 2, 2023, 12:10am

Sounds like “progress” to me!

Erica.vH · May 2, 2023, 10:14pm

New try, different error.
Now I get: “an unknown error” and a suggestion to report bug on bugzilla.redhat
But as I’m in theearly stage of the install, I don’t have network, so no report possible.
I’m installing on:
Sda1 EFI partition /boot/efi
sda2 ext3 partition /boot

NVMe0n1p13 = LVM2 64GB -crypted- qubes_dom0-0
– And a 32GB swap partition qubes_dom-0-0-swap
– And a 32GB /temp partition qubes_dom-0-0-TEMP
NVMe1n1p1+NVMe2n1p1 = LVM2 -crypted- 2,4TB qubes_dom0
– And a 90% GB / qubes_dom-0-root
NVMe2n1p2 = LVM2 -crypted- 1,1 TB qubes_dom0-1
– And a 95% GB /home qubes_dom-0-homes

I bet some is not appreciated by the installer, like the multiple dom0-0; dom0-1 ?

Erica.vH · May 2, 2023, 11:36pm

Erica.vH · May 2, 2023, 11:38pm