On Sat, Oct 19, 2024 at 08:29:10PM +0000, g4sra wrote:
> Your partitioning looks way out of whack to me.

Yes, I'm pretty sure I made some error with the installation, but
redid it carefully. It now ends with the GRUB prompt (grub>). I'll
outline the steps I took and raise some.

Background: I installed a second SSD into a desktop machine and want
to install Devuan to it using a commercial devuan-live key.

When I boot Devuan-live it does not indicate whether it is for BIOS
or UEFI. Does the current installer no longer indicate that?

When I run the installer, I'm told that it sees an EFI partition on
both SSDs. Booting from the first is normal. Is this a recommendation
or merely what is typical? I tried both but still end up with grub>.

I choose default installation options.

As you suggest, I suspect my problem comes with partitioning, I chose
gdisk to partition. I tell the partitioner to partition
/dev/nvme1n1---the second SSD. I have a lot of partitions, but here is
the partiion number, purpose, size and type of the first four and
swap:

        1 boot   5G 8300
        2 efi  550G EF00
        3 root  20G 8303
        4 home 300G 8302
        ...
        11 swap 30G 8200

I'm told that /home will not be broken out, but that is what I want.
What is the meaning of this message?

I wrote the partition table, and install options seemed to indicate
that partition formatting is automatic. But if I create a new table
should I use the terminal to format them?

How does the installer know in which partition to put the files?
For example, how does it know partition 4 is the place to put my user directory?

I presume it uses dd to copy files because no partition is mounted as
far as I know. Are they mounted somehow?

gdisk does not see the swap partion that I just created and asks if I want to
use s swap file instead. I say yes, although I worry that it can't seen.

I'm asked if the target partition is /dev/nvme1n1p3, the intended partition.
I say y(es). Why is N(o) option preferred? It makes no sense to me unless it is
merey a precaution.

The installer files get copies to the target root partition. I install the
bootloader. I'm told that I did the installation to parittion 3 (root)
and edf is on partition 2.

I would apprirate anwers to all question in addition to pointing out what
I obviously did wroong.

--
Haines Brown