How to install with additional partition

Getting Started with IPFire
1

Hi,

I have to set up a new IPFire installation on a device that may take only a single drive. This will be a 2TB ssd and needs to have a partition for samba share.

How can I set up IPFire with a additional partition for samba?

Cheers

2

EDIT: text modified for accuracy and references.

IPFire creates 4 partitions (see below): boot, efi, swap and main using a msdos partition scheme (max 4 primary partitions and 2 TB limitations, therefore you need to convert one of them into an extended partition segmented in two logical partitions).

After installing IPFire I would boot a live gparted usb or unplug the disk and mount it on linux machine with gparted. Then I would resize the main partition (the one mounting the root, number 4 in the example below) changing it into and extended partition, and segmenting it into two logical partitions, including the extra one dedicated to samba. You can find many tutorials like this one to give you some idea of how to proceed.

[root@ipfire cfusco]# parted -l
Model: ATA KINGSTON SMS200S (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  135MB   134MB   primary  ext4            boot
 2      135MB   169MB   33.6MB  primary  fat16           esp
 3      169MB   1198MB  1029MB  primary  linux-swap(v1)  swap
 4      1198MB  60.0GB  58.8GB  primary  ext4
3 Likes
3

So there is no way to edit something like a config that will be used during the setup to create an additional partition?

4

No there is isn’t.

5

This is extreme constraint in useability and also on security of one’s data. Considering you can serve samba shares, or even run virtual machines on ipfire thru libvirt and qemu, custom partitioning during the install is really reasonable feature to have.

While proposed solution (default install and then repartition/resize etc) is doable it’s also awkward in the same time. Not talking about what crazy stuff one need to do in case of disaster recovery where you need to restore/reinstall ipfire installation on disk where you have important data residing on that “fifth” partition already (therefore clean install is not possible).

Can anyone help me understand why such a common feature is not there ?

In order to not only complain, i would like to say that I like ipfire so much and really appreciate the work you guys are doing.