[RESOLVED] Need to shrink a partition if possible..

[Joel64]

I'm installing 22.04 on a laptop that came with Windows 11. I'm replacing Windows 11, not dual booting.

During installation I see that there's a 256GB partition as well as a 1TB partition.
After the install, KDE Partition Manager shows that luks2 is using 236GB of that space.

How do I shrink that down? I can't see why that much space would be needed for anything.

[Schwarzer Kater]

For safety could you post a screenshot or the output of lsblk -f -e7 ?

[Joel64]

For safety could you post a screenshot or the output of lsblk -f -e7 ?

Here you go:




The partition in question is more clearly seen in KDE Partition Manager:

[Schwarzer Kater]

I don't quite get you set-up…

One general information I can give you is that it is possible to shrink a (mounted!) LUKS partition with GParted if cryptsetup and dmsetup are installed.
With the KDE Partition Manager I have lost data several times in the past, so I don't use it anymore for complex operations (this may have been personal bad luck, though).

Here is a link to an article from the ArchWiki: Resizing LVM-on-LUKS
Here is a link for the CLI for *Ubuntu (it is from 2015…): ResizeEncryptedPartitions

Whatever you do: back up your important data first!

[Joel64]

I don't quite get you set-up…

This is something that's been making me wonder since the start (among other things). I've reinstalled a number of times, and the partitioning is always a bit... not what I would expect.
But no matter what I do during the install, Kubuntu sets it up the way it sets it up. With Win11, the HD was partitioned as 256GB for the C drive and the rest for the D drive.
I know zero about how to do partitioning, so I haven't tried it. I chose the "wipe entire drive" option, but apparently that doesn't actually mean the entire drive, lol.

I just want to be able to use as much of it as possible.

[Schwarzer Kater]

First you would to have to specify what you want to do exactly…

If you don't have any important data on your two drives (there seem to be two internal drives in your computer according to lsblk: one SATA and one NVMe…): boot e.g. from a GParted live USB stick and select one drive after the other from the --> GParted --> Devices menu and each time install a new GPT partition table to the drive -

Warning: this will absolutely delete any data on the two drives!

Afterwards either do the partitioning from the GParted live USB stick or during the installation with "Manual Partitioning" - or just use the default "auto install" without any LUKS/encryption etc. (what do you need this for anyway on a private desktop computer at home?).

Here is an example for a very basic UEFI set-up for Linux (and the Calamares installer, hence ESP >= 300 MiB - much more doesn't make any sense) without encryption:

• one partition in FAT32, size 304 MiB (I would advise you to make this at least 300 MiB for the "future" - even if you install 22.04 now) with the flags boot,esp and mounted at /boot/efi
• a second partition in e.g. ext4 for the rest with no flags and mounted at /

[Joel64]

First you would to have to specify what you want to do exactly… <snip>

Thanks for all that. I've bookmarked this thread for when I try 24.04 again. ...it'll be 24.04.1 I imagine.

...without any LUKS/encryption etc. (what do you need this for anyway on a private desktop computer at home?)

I did that because the non-LVM install gave me weird partitioning, but I don't remember exactly what was going on.