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If you choose guided partitioning, you may have three options: to create partitions directly on the hard disk (classic method), or to create them using Logical Volume Management (LVM), or to create them using encrypted LVM4.

Note: The option to use (encrypted) LVM may not be available on all architectures.

When using LVM or encrypted LVM, the installer will create most partitions inside one big partition; the advantage of this method is that partitions inside this big partition can be resized relatively easily later. In the case of encrypted LVM the big partition will not be readable without knowing a special key phrase, thus providing extra security of your (personal) data.

When using encrypted LVM, the installer will also automatically erase the disk by writing random data to it. This further improves security (as it makes it impossible to tell which parts of the disk are in use and also makes sure that any traces of previous installations are erased), but may take some time depending on the size of your disk.

Note: If you choose guided partitioning using LVM or encrypted LVM, some changes in the par- tition table will need to be written to the selected disk while LVM is being set up. These changes effectively erase all data that is currently on the selected hard disk and you will not be able to undo them later. However, the installer will ask you to confirm these changes before they are written to disk.

If you choose guided partitioning (either classic or using (encrypted) LVM) for a whole disk, you will first be asked to select the disk you want to use. Check that all your disks are listed and, if you have several disks, make sure you select the correct one. The order they are listed in may differ from what you are used to. The size of the disks may help to identify them.

Any data on the disk you select will eventually be lost, but you will always be asked to confirm any changes before they are written to the disk. If you have selected the classic method of partitioning, you will be able to undo any changes right until the end; when using (encrypted) LVM this is not possible.

Next, you will be able to choose from the schemes listed in the table below. All schemes have their pros and cons, some of which are discussed in Appendix C. If you are unsure, choose the first one. Bear in mind that guided partitioning needs a certain minimal amount of free space to operate with. If you don’t give it at least about 1GB of space (depends on chosen scheme), guided partitioning will fail.

4. The installer will encrypt the LVM volume group using a 256 bit AES key and makes use of the kernel’s “dm-crypt” support.

If you choose guided partitioning using (encrypted) LVM, the installer will also create a separate

/boot partition. The other partitions, including the swap partition, will be created inside the LVM partition.

If you have booted in EFI mode then within the guided partitioning setup there will be an additional partition, formatted as a FAT32 bootable filesystem, for the EFI boot loader. This partition is known as an EFI System Partition (ESP). There is also an additional menu item in the formatting menu to manually set up a partition as an ESP.

After selecting a scheme, the next screen will show your new partition table, including information on whether and how partitions will be formatted and where they will be mounted.

The list of partitions might look like this:

SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 6.4 GB WDC AC36400L

#1 primary 16.4 MB B f ext2 /boot

#2 primary 551.0 MB swap swap

#3 primary 5.8 GB ntfs pri/log 8.2 MB FREE SPACE

SCSI2 (1,0,0) (sdb) - 80.0 GB ST380021A

This example shows two hard drives divided into several partitions; the first disk has some free space. Each partition line consists of the partition number, its type, size, optional flags, file system, and mountpoint (if any).

Note: This particular setup cannot be created using guided partitioning but it does show possible variation that can be achieved using manual partitioning.

This concludes the guided partitioning. If you are satisfied with the generated partition table, you can choose Finish partitioning and write changes to disk from the menu to implement the new partition table (as described at the end of this section). If you are not happy, you can choose to Undo changes to partitions and run guided partitioning again, or modify the proposed changes as described below for Manual Partitioning.

6.3.3.3. Manual Partitioning

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