Description of problem: The current workflow of Anaconda custom partitioning is confusing and cannot be used to create certain partition layouts. When the "Custom partitioning" is selected, a screen appears with a drop down menu, which sets the partitioning scheme to be used on all newly created partitions. Sometimes, this behaviour might cause errors that are not explanatory and bring confusion into process. Also, no guidance is provided in these cases. See the following use cases: Scenario 1 - Preserve the home directory in the same disk layout On my disk there is a Fedora Workstation installation with the Btrfs partitioning scheme. There are three partitions `/`, `/boot`, and `/home`. The `/boot` partition is a standard one, while the rest is a Btrfs logical volume with two subvolumes inside. I would like to reinstall Fedora, but would like to keep the `/home` as is. I could mount /boot, mark with "Reformat" and hit "Update Settings", mount /home and hit "Update Settings", and mount /, mark with "Reformat" and hit "Update Settings". This approach would work. However, if I deleted the `/` partition, there is no way how to create a new one instead. Anaconda will try to add the partition next to the Btrfs volume instead creating a root subvolume as it was created previously. After viciously trying for some time over and over again, I realized that it only works, when the partitioning scheme drop down menu has been correctly set to Btrfs before I even started the process. Once the process has started, there is no way to change the type of partitions being added. Errors report that "Not enough disks for single" or similar error, which does not explain why this has happened in the first place. The situation is visible in the attached video. Scenario 2 - Create a new subvolume (or LVM volume) in an existing setup. For LVM, this scenario needs deleting the old root (if I want to keep the home) to make some space for the extra partition. Then root needs to be recreated and a new paritition added. Again, this will only work when correct partitioning scheme is selected before users even attempt to change the layout. Otherwise, it will fail. Scenario 3 - In a default LVM setup, preserve home and change root to btrfs This is not possible, because even deleting one or more partitions from an LVM does not shrink the entire LVM so there is no place left on device for the btrfs root when the LVM has been spread over the entire media. Solution: The drop down menu should only be relevant for "Click here to create them automatically" where the selected scheme will be used, but when adding new partitions into the scheme, I should be able to chose from some options to be able to decide later in the process. For example: The current scheme uses a standard `/boot` and btrfs `/`, then my options should be: a) Add another btrfs subvolume into the btrfs scheme. b) Add an LVM partition. c) Add a standard partition. In case there were not enough space, I should be informed about it, for example: "There is not enough space on the media to create an LVM (standard) partition next to the btrfs volume." Delete the Btrfs volume first to free up the space or add your partition as a Btrfs subvolume." How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: See scenarios 1, 2, and 3
The video could not be attached, so there is a link to it here: https://youtu.be/s5OKNXzwTtM
I'd like to point out that two long-time Fedora QA testers (Lukas and I) spent *several hours* on this problem before we realized that the "New mount points will use..." drop-down list affects all the rest of the custom partitioning, and that certain use cases are impossible to do without correctly setting this drop-down value well in advance. So there is little hope that standard users will be able to realize this. I'll quote myself from https://pagure.io/fedora-qa/issue/643#comment-677549 : The devilish part here is that: a) the drop-down list value seems to be related to an automatic partition creation, but it is applied to manual partition creation as well b) the drop-down list is inaccessible once you create/mount your first partition. So you can't even change it when you need it, and therefore it's very hard to figure out that this is the cause of the problem. It took me a long time and a lot of debugging to realize this. Please *please* change the UI.
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