[lubuntu-users] Assistance with partitioning 20.04

[Stack Korora]

Greetings,

I'm really struggling with getting the partitioning of Lubuntu 20.04 on
my laptop and would appreciate some assistance. It's a very straight
forward layout that I've used for years and years. Yet I feel like I'm
losing my sanity with this new installer.

500MB /boot (or on my newest laptop /boot/efi
The rest of the disk is LUKS + LVM where:
15GB /
2GB swap
10GB /tmp <- needed for an app I use
everything else /home

Simple! The alternate installers let me configure this without an issue.
However, it is my understanding that there will not be an alternate
installer for 20.04. And this new GUI installer is mind-boggling insane
and severely irking me.

The very first boot of the new installer, it detected my previous 18.04
install, but wouldn't let me configure the partitions...It refused to
unlock the LUKS partition. Fine, the laptop is backed up 100% so I let
the partitioner have its way in setting up a boot and I checked the box
for encrypted partition. I set the partition to LVM and created a new
LVM volume...BTW, whoever decided to hide the LVM screen with the disks
really needs to reconsider UI design...took me forever to figure out
where it had hidden the LVM - utterly and pointlessly confusing with
ZERO indication to the user that's what it did. Finally, I figure that
out but the GUI installer doesn't let me add _partitions_ to the LVM.
What??? What's the point in a LVM without partitions?

OK, whatever. It's LVM. I can just install to this and shrink/carve it
up however I want later. I let it finish the install...and it didn't
install LVM...It just installed EXT4 on top of LUKS... Grrrrr....I KNOW
I selected LVM....stupid installer...

Fine. Boot up the installer again. This time, I open a terminal and
carved out the partitioning /precisely/ the way I wanted to before I
started the installer. The disk is _perfect_. The stupid UI won't unlock
the LUKS partition! It gives me the option to use it as LUKS, but then
there is nothing to do after that. The next button is greyed out, there
is no drop down selection to adjust LUKS. I can't do anything at all
with it....

Fine. I will unlock LUKS first and start the installer up again. The
installer wants to jack up all the partitions and I won't let it. I've
already formatted them perfect, I just want it to install. I click next
all the way to the install button and it throws an error about being
unable to use the partitions and IT CRASHES! Just poof! Not only did it
crash, it took the LVM partitions with it!! GRRRRRRR!

Fine. It doesn't like me having it formatted. I will carve up the
partitions, but I won't format them this time. In fact, I won't even do
anything more than create a single LVM volume that I can adjust later.
So, now I have LUKS unlock, LVM configured, and a single partition.
Start the blasted installer AGAIN. I let it format the partition and it
installs! SWEET HALLELUJAH!

Reboot...and....nothing? WTF?

Booting into the live environment AGAIN. So my guess is that because the
stupid installer can't unlock the LUKS device, when I unlocked it for it
then it never configured it as a LUKS encrypted device...the boot
partition couldn't find the LVM it needed to boot.

:facepalm:

I'm now two hours into just trying to install a /REALLY/ simple
partition layout. I blitz through this part of the alternate installer
in a few keyboard strokes (gah I miss the text installer, so simple and
straight forward). But this new gui partitioning is utterly awful at
anything but selecting defaults. Surely someone tested LVM and LUKS with
this new installer, right? I must be missing something, but I've been
pouring over every option of this installer and it just isn't obvious to
me at all. I only discovered the drop down for the disks and LVM by
mistake, so I even just spent time clicking all over the damn UI to see
if there was another hidden menu, but I didn't find any more.

Can someone please help me figure out what I'm missing for this
installer to recognize a sane partition layout on an encrypted disk?

Thank you,
~Stack~