addw@phcomp.co.uk wrote:
>On Thu, Aug 14, 2025 at 04:27:02PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>
>> Exactly. The live installation options in Calamares are *easy* for a
>> simple installation, but also incredibly limited in flexibility. For
>> wider choices, we very much recommend using d-i instead. It's still
>> not *hard*, but you might need to actually think about your
>> installation. If you really want to see all the options, run d-i in
>> expert mode. It takes a long time...
>
>Oh .... not having done a Debian installation recently I had forgotten about d-i.
Yeah, I guessed. Looking at your description of working around
Calamares for a more complex disk setup was cringe-inducing. :-(
To manually configure disks in Calamares you just have to choose the manual configuration option. From the manual configuration you can configure LVM, LUKS etc. With hard drives being so large now I do not configure partitions for /var or /home, it is not 1990 any more. I only use swap, /boot/efi and /. I haven't had any issues with my drive filling up from logs or user files. I do have a 3TB USB drive that I keep all of my Music, Movies and TV shows on though. It is getting full so I will have to remove some content I do not use or upgrade to a larger model. On my living room PC I have a 18TB USB Drive. I saw recently on Amazon that WD has a 36TB drive available for sale.
We do a lot of testing of various disk scenarios with d-i (RAID, LVM,
lots of different filesystems, etc.) so we can have confidence that
it's working OK. The interface available in the d-i environment is
quite limiting, but it can be used to set up complex things quite
readily.
I just wish I had the time to do the partman rewrite I've
half-designed in my head.
>I just clicked on 'Install' (or whatever) on the desktop when I booted from the
>live CD.
>
>It would be really good if Calamares very early on said "please use d-i for
>more flexible installs" or something better worded than what I just wrote.
Actually, that's a really good idea. Could you please submit a
wishlist bug for that? :-)
--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com
Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky,
Tongue-tied & twisted, Just an earth-bound misfit, I...