PART TWO of: creation of ext4 filesystem takes 20+ hours???

[Marco Fioretti]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 04:38:39 AM +0000, Marco Fioretti wrote:

> I wanted to use all of [that drive] as /home, so before starting
> the install I deleted its windows partition, and expanded the
> ubuntu one to fill the whole drive. Then I started
> the installation, and told the installer to:
> 
> 1) place boot loader and ubuntu on the C drive
> 
> 2) reformat /dev/sda, make an ext4 filesystem on it and make it /home
> 
> the installer said "OK, no problem, but this may take a long time"
> 
> 20 hours later, it's still doing it, the little circle that replaces the cursor
> slowly spinning...

(full original message at
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2022-October/308626.html)

Hello again,

short version: I surely messed up something, pls help...

long version: this may be an interesting problem for expert to
discuss, keep reading...

I have switched off that laptop, tried again to install, and it still
goes into a loop, probably because of some mistakes I did BEFORE, so
let's restart:

this laptop has 2 ssd drives, that I called A and C,

A (seen as /dev/sda by the Ubuntu 22.04 live USB key I have) is 320 GB
and HAD 2 partitions, a small one with windows, the other with Ubuntu
(20.04 IIRC)

C (seen as /dev/sdb) is 64GB, split into 2 ext4 partitions, say C1 and C2

I wanted to:

a) delete the windows partition on /dev/sda and expand the ext4 one to
   fill it, in order to use all of /dev/sda, 320 GB, as /home

b) install Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on C1

So I booted the live USB key, and used gparted to do a), and it seemed
OK, but when I tried to install it got stuck as in my original
message.

BUT, I have noticed that:

if I launch gparted when running in live mode, it says /dev/sda is
298.09 GB (not 320), with one ext4 partition /dev/sda3, size 298.09
GB, used 1.94 GB, unused 296.15 GB. First sector 2048, Last sector
625141759, total sectors 625139712. And if I ask gparted to check that
partition, it says everything is OK

then, when I click on "Install Ubuntu", select "Normal installation"
and "Installation type: Something else", to do a) and b) above

- I select /dev/sdb (the 64 GB drive called "C" above) for boot loader
  installation

- I select /dev/sda3 to say that I want it to be /home, and notice
that the installer says it is 320.1 GB, NOT 298.09 (size 320071 MB,
used 6164)

- when I click on "change", the "Edit" pop-up windows reports 320072
MB as size, and when I select "use as ext4 journaling file system" and
enter /home as mount point, I get this message:

"Before you can select a new partition size, any previous changes have
to be written to the disk. You cannot undo this operation. Please note
that the resize operation may take a long time. Go back or continue?"

and if I click on "Continue", it hangs as it did the first time. If I
click "Go back", select /dev/sdb1 as "/" and click "Install now", I
get:

"No EFI system partition was found. This system will likely not be
able to boot successfully, and the installation process may
fail. Please go back and add an EFI system partition, or continue at
your own risk"

So, as far as I understand now, and remember from the first trial, the
EFI partition probably was the windows one that I deleted on /dev/sda,
and this in turn also caused the size mismatch (298 instead of 320GB)
that made the installer hang, even before noticing the EFI problem.

How should I fix this?

TIA,
Marco