partitioner minimises extended partition; primitive tools like fdisk have trouble using unallocated space afterwards

[udosoft]

Binary package hint: debian-installer

The installer partitioning tool does not allocate full extended space,
meaning,
for example

when creating 3 primary and 1 logical partition, then the remaining space cannot be used afterwards ( or only with lot of work)

let say
1:p:/boot 100M
2:p:swap 10Gb
3:p:/ 20GB
(4):-5:/var/log 10 GB
unallocated space 200GB

you cannot use the 200GB after install only with deleting and recreating partitions with fdisk and you will lose data have to rewrite fstab etc...

Behavior should be one of the following
- allocating the remaining space to extended and creating a logical volume with the given size
- able to create the extended volume with given parameters and then only be able to create logical volumes
- ask if the whole remaining space should be allocated to the extended partition or not

workaround:
creating fake logical partition and delete afterwards , editing afterwards is very hard to do anything without loosing data...

Best Regards
Udo Attila Fischer

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: base-files 5.0.0ubuntu15
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-19.28-server 2.6.32.10+drm33.1
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-19-server x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Apr 12 15:53:59 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta amd64 (20100406.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=hu_HU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: debian-installer

[udosoft (udo1)]

Please move to the right package, I think debian-installer should be the right one.

Thanks in advance!

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Why not use a tool less primitive than fdisk? A smarter tool would be able to expand the extended partition for you.

In this particular case, it would probably have been reasonable to make the extended partition run up to the end of the disk, but there are lots of conditions on whether this is reasonable and to be honest I doubt that it is worth the effort. Just use something better than fdisk instead.

[udosoft (udo1)]

Hi Colin,

Ok. Can you give a name of a smarter tool?

Thanks in Advance!

on 2010.04.27. 12:44, Colin Watson wrote:
> Why not use a tool less primitive than fdisk? A smarter tool would be
> able to expand the extended partition for you.
>
> In this particular case, it would probably have been reasonable to make
> the extended partition run up to the end of the disk, but there are lots
> of conditions on whether this is reasonable and to be honest I doubt
> that it is worth the effort. Just use something better than fdisk
> instead.
>
> ** Package changed: base-files (Ubuntu) => partman-base (Ubuntu)
>
> ** Changed in: partman-base (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided => Wishlist
>
> ** Changed in: partman-base (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Triaged
>
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - installer partitioner does not allocate the full remaining free space, means it is hard to use unused space afterwards
> + partitioner minimises extended partition; primitive tools like fdisk have trouble using unallocated space afterwards
>
>

[udosoft (udo1)]

Only cfdisk works ok
with parted is possible but hard to resize too