installing ubuntu on a new system - questions

[Robert Heller]

Ever since LVM was an option I have always used it when installing Linux 
(various distros).  LVM lets one divvy up chunks of disk space for different 
things (root, /home, /data, /backups, VMs, etc.)  and to grow or shrink those 
"chunks" as needs change over time.  One does not have to be "locked" into a 
partitioning at install time that may prove to not meet your needs later on.

My typical partitioning looks like this:

/dev/sda1  EFI or grub (vfat)
/dev/sda2  /boot/boot, (ext4) typically 1-2 Gig  Contains grub, vmlinuxzs, 
                     init ramdisks.
/dev/sda3  LVM, containing:
            / -- about 32Gig
            /home -- about 50 to 100 gig
            Various other system special purpose volumes
            

Some examples:

On my Pi5, running Raspbian (Debian) 12, with a nvme SSD:
marchhare% df -h
Filesystem                         Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev                               2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev
tmpfs                              405M  7.5M  398M   2% /run
/dev/nvme0n1p2                      29G   20G  6.8G  75% /
tmpfs                              2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                              5.0M   64K  5.0M   2% /run/lock
/dev/mapper/MarchHare-MyMusic       14G   12G  1.3G  91% /MyMusic
/dev/mapper/MarchHare-holdingdisk   50G  1.9G   45G   4% /holdingdisk
/dev/mapper/MarchHare-opt           15G   11G  3.2G  78% /opt
/dev/mapper/MarchHare-home          69G   65G  1.4G  98% /home
/dev/mmcblk0p1                     510M   85M  426M  17% /boot/firmware
/dev/mapper/MarchHare-scratch      9.8G  5.5G  3.8G  60% /scratch
/dev/mapper/MarchHare-mysql        9.8G  5.1G  4.2G  55% /var/lib/mysql
/dev/mapper/MarchHare-C5_SM        4.9G  305M  4.3G   7% /svnrepo
/dev/mapper/MarchHare-KiCAD        5.9G  5.6G     0 100% /usr/share/kicad
/dev/mapper/MarchHare-www          2.0G  1.2G  611M  67% /var/www
tmpfs                              405M  320K  405M   1% /run/user/1000

(/dev/nvme0n1 is the SSD (256G), /dev/mmcblk0 is the uSD boot disk (32G),
/dev/mapper/MarchHare is the LVM container.)

My (now dead) AMD64 system disk (a 2TB roating rust disk) is partitions like
this:

marchhare% sudo parted print /dev/sda
Error: Could not stat device print - No such file or directory.
Retry/Cancel? c                                                           
marchhare% sudo parted /dev/sda print
Model: ST2000DM 008-2FR102 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
 1      1049kB  256MB   255MB                      bios_grub
 2      256MB   2000MB  1744MB  ext4
 3      2000MB  2000GB  1998GB

Partition 1 contains grub (the AMD64 was not EFI), partiton 2 was /boot and 
partiton was LVM (actually partitions 2 and 3 were software RAID (mirror) with 
ext4 and LVM on top).  The LVM VG contained several volumes:

  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/ubuntu_root
  LV Name                ubuntu_root
  LV Size                70.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/home
  LV Name                home
  LV Size                100.00 GiB

  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/extra
  LV Name                extra
  LV Size                100.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/Swap
  LV Name                Swap
  LV Size                2.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/dvdisos
  LV Name                dvdisos
  LV Size                30.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/C5_SM
  LV Name                C5_SM
  LV Size                5.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/www
  LV Name                www
  LV Size                2.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/localrepo
  LV Name                localrepo
  LV Size                2.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/msbuilder
  LV Name                msbuilder
  LV Size                22.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/distrocds
  LV Name                distrocds
  LV Size                20.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/PipinBackup
  LV Name                PipinBackup
  LV Size                150.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/ub1204_64
  LV Name                ub1204_64
  LV Size                20.00 GiB
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                /dev/sauron/rpibackups
  LV Name                rpibackups
  LV Size                100.00 GiB
   


At Wed, 16 Jul 2025 07:58:03 -0400 "Ubuntu user technical support,? not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> Looking to install ubuntu, have lots of questions. Most are probably basic.
> 
> When installing, do you use LVM? Is there a good reason to use/not use LVM?
> 
> thanks
> 
> ps, I've got more things I'm trying to solve, but I didn't want to get
> bogged down. Basically, I want to have a set of steps that work, and
> I'm not doing trial/error testing without knowing if what I'm doing is
> really correct?
> 
> thanks
> 

-- 
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