Instruction for custom partitioning during Ubuntu install anywhare?

[Bo Berglund]

On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 13:16:15 +0100, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:

>On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 at 00:54, Bo Berglund <bo.berglund at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Later:
>> It won't boot to the USB device where I have the Ubuntu 20 installer...
>
>Question 1:
>
>Is it set in the firmware to boot:
>* UEFI only
>* BIOS only
>* Both, UEFI first?
>* Both, BIOS first?

This HP "BIOS" does not look anywhere like the Lenovo one I discussed here a
while ago, but I tried to find and set the relevant items as best I could to
boot to USB.

I think I managed to set it for "Enable Legacy" and "Secure Boot off"
But the dialogs changed when other items changed so it was hard to understand
what was going on.

In one setting that later became disabled I could specify to first boot USB and
then the built-in SSD.

>Q2:
>
>Is your Ubuntu USB key standalone (should boot both types) or Ventoy?
>I do not usually use standalone keys any more myself, because I find
>Ventoy so much easier.

It is a standalone USB 20.04.x live ISO burned to a thumb drive using Balena
Etcher on Windows when I was installing on the Lenovo back in fall 2021. In fact
I now have a thumb drive with the GParted Standalone ISO too.

>> Even later:
>> After I inserted a USB DVD drive (HP) with the Ubuntu 20 DVD ISO disk it
>> actually finally booted to the live DVD.
>
>Still applies. UEFI or BIOS mode? Everything else afterwards depends on this.

I really don't know. On the Lenovo Windows was available and the way to switch
to USB boot was to first boot to Windows and then :
- Hold shift down
- Click Start/Power/Restart
- Now a different menu pops up where one can choose "Use a device"
- Then in a list select the device that is the USB key
- Now the USB will boot
Pretty darn complicated...

But after a number of visits to the HP "BIOS" it finally booted the Live DVD
from the USB DVD drive and I could install Ubuntu.

Unfortunately I decided to partition myself in order to get /home into a
separate partition and limit the size of the system partition, but it did not
work at all. Would not boot when done.

So after futile attempts at getting it recognized I revisited the "BIOS" in
order to repeat the installation and finally managed to get the DVD running
again.
This time I did NOT select "other" concerning disk layout but let Ubuntu install
fresh after it erased the disk.

So now I have a booting Ubuntu and the machine also boots to USB if such a drive
is inserted before start.

I used that to boot my GParted Live disk so I could shrink the system partition
from 500 GB down to 30 and create a home partition in the space freed.

But now I have to repeat the complicated way of moving /home off to the prepared
partition I did with the Lenovo earlier...


-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden