Arch Linux

friendofarch

Member

Registered: 2013-12-30

Posts: 59

Install on 2 SSDs with FDE and BtrFS. Help needed...

Hi,
since my /-partition is at present to small (~8GB) and I constantly run out of space I want to reinstall, since resizing seems to be too complicated or even impossible because of full disk encryption.

So I have:

- 20GB mSATA drive
- 180 GB drive
- both SSDs

The plan:

• FDE where I enter the passphrase only once on bootup

• 150MB /boot on mSATA device (Ext2)

• 12-14GB / on mSATA device  (Ext4)

• rest (6-8GB) SWAP on mSATA device  #edit: won´t use swap

• 180GB /home on main drive (BtrFS)

Now I wonder which is the right order to install.

My idea was to:

• Create partitions (sized like above)

• Configure LVM (VM)

• Setup Encryption

• Create Filesystems

• Install

Questions:
1. Do I make any logical mistakes or is there a better way to achieve this?
2. If BtrFS contains a VM do I need LVM?
3.If I want to add the remaining space on the 20GB device to the /home partition, do I have to do it with LVM or is it possible directly with BtrFS, since is has integrated an integrated volume manager?

Last edited by friendofarch (2017-01-20 19:24:56)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,520

Website

Re: Install on 2 SSDs with FDE and BtrFS. Help needed...

As I started reading this I was first going to comment on swap.  I've not used swap in any form for many years.  There is generally no need for a swap partition - especially because you could use a swap file if you ever needed it for a bit.

The only exception to this is if you wish to hibernate.  Hibernation requires swap and it may need to be a swap partition.

Further, there are claims out there that swap (partition or file) on a SSD can be very bad for the SSD - I don't know how well backed up these claims are, but if there is no absolute need for one, I'd definitely not make a swap partition.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

friendofarch

Member

Registered: 2013-12-30

Posts: 59

Re: Install on 2 SSDs with FDE and BtrFS. Help needed...

As I started reading this I was first going to comment on swap.  I've not used swap in any form for many years.  There is generally no need for a swap partition - especially because you could use a swap file if you ever needed it for a bit.

The only exception to this is if you wish to hibernate.  Hibernation requires swap and it may need to be a swap partition.

Further, there are claims out there that swap (partition or file) on a SSD can be very bad for the SSD - I don't know how well backed up these claims are, but if there is no absolute need for one, I'd definitely not make a swap partition.

Fine, I'll go for that. As written above I never use Suspend to disk/Hibernate!

Thanks for the comment...