SOLVED: creation of ext4 filesystem takes 20+ hours???

[M. Fioretti]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 18:29:55 PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:

> <long explanation deleted for brevity>

thanks Liam, and all the others who stepped in.

Everything works as desired now. Below is the detailed description of
what I did, which is basically the same instructions provided by Liam,
in a more compact and hopefully readable format, and with a few extra
details. Comments welcome, of course.

Thanks again, everybody,

Marco

First, boot the live system, run gparted, make 2 new MBR partition
tables, once for each drive. Then...

## ON SDA
- select /dev/sda
- Device -> Create Partition Table -> msdos (=MBR)
- Partition -> New -> extended partition
- repeat previous step to create in that 1 logical partition, type ext4
- apply pending operations, this will name the two partitions /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda5

## ON SDB:

- select /dev/sdb
- delete all existing partitions
- apply pending operations
- Device -> Create Partition Table -> msdos (MBR)
- partition -> New -> Primary, 500Mib, FAT32 -> /dev/sdb1
- partition -> New -> Primary, 51.32 GiB, ext4 -> /dev/sdb2
- partition -> New -> extended, 7.81 Gib -> /dev/sdb3
- partition -> New -> logical, 7.81 GiB, linux-swap -> /dev/sdb5
- apply pending operations
- select /dev/sdb1 -> Manage flags -> check esp AND boot

**NOTE:** /dev/sdb1 gets a warning icon (red circle with exclamation mark inside). Right-clicking on it and opening the information pane, iits warning sectiono says

"unable to read the content of this file system! because of this some operations may be unavailable. The cause might be a missing software package. The following list of software packages is required for fat32 file system support: dosfstools, mtools"

### Installation - "do something else phase"

- /dev/sda5 -> ext4, do not format, mount point /home

- NOTE: the above gives again the warning "resizing this may take a long time". Clicking "back" makes the warning disappear, and the "ext4, mount point /home" setting is loaded, so OK, it seems

- /dev/sdb1 -> use as EFI does NOT give the option to set mount point
  Probably irrelevant, according to https://askubuntu.com/questions/1403248/how-to-set-mount-point-for-new-esp-partition

- /dev/sdb2 -> ext4, do not format, mount point /

- /dev/sdb5 -> swap, do not format, mount point (swap)

- device for boot loader installation: /dev/sdb

from then on, it was a boring, well working installation, as they all should.

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