Installing OM Lx on already partitioned drive

Hello,

  • OpenMandriva Lx version:

All

  • Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…):

All

  • Description of the issue (screenshots if relevant):

User has asked about how to install OM Lx 4.1 on an already partitioned drive. Post-edit: Currently this video applies to any version on OM Lx including Cooker, Rolling, and Rock/4.1.

  • Relevant informations (hardware involved, software version, logs or output…):

This shows how to do that with /, /home, and existing swap partitions. In addition this shows how to mount data partitions. It is highly recommended to keep important files on a data partition not a system partition. In other words don’t store important stuff on / partition.

Important note: If you use data partitions then do not format them when installing. Formatting partitions results in loss of all files/data.

Not as important note: You may call data partitions what ever you choose to.

So I made a quick and unprofessional video of doing exactly what I describe above. You will notice that while there is an existing swap partition I do not at any point select it. This is because the OM Calamares partitioner automatically mounts any existing swap partition.

Hope this is helpful to some users. The poor quality of the video reflects that I don’t know much at all about posting videos on YouTube. I’ll see If I can make a better one when I get some time.

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And yet another important note: For systems with existing /boot/efi partition you need only to select to mount the partition as /boot/efi. The boot flag will be automatically selected (it has to be there). There is no esp flag in the list as /boot/efi partitions are by definition ESP partitions and automatically labeled as such.

This screen-shot shows how the already existing /boot/efi partition is listed under the command 'sudo parted -l:

This shows how the same /boot/efi partition is listed under the command ‘sudo fdisk -l’:

So we can see that the boot and esp flags are already present there is nothing to add in the Calamares installer.

Another question may be whether to format the /boot/efi partition. If you are multi-booting and wish to keep boot entries for other Linux OS’s then you do not want to format. The OM Calamares partitioner will still write and set as default a new OM boot-loader. If you wish to use the boot-loader from some other Linux you can set that in UEFI firmware (aka BIOS) or set it after booting you system with efibootmgr.

User installing on a fresh unpartitioned drive on UEFI/EFI system will be creating a new /boot/efi partition and will need to select the boot flag in that case. As stated above the esp flag is set automatically by parted.