[Bug 247489] Change default partitioning on downloadable VM images

[bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org]

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=247489

            Bug ID: 247489
           Summary: Change default partitioning on downloadable VM images
           Product: Base System
           Version: 12.1-RELEASE
          Hardware: Any
               URL: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/disks-growing.htm
                    l
                OS: Any
            Status: New
          Severity: Affects Only Me
          Priority: ---
         Component: misc
          Assignee: bugs at FreeBSD.org
          Reporter: freebsd at filter.paco.to

If you look at the online documentation for growing filesystems
(https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/disks-growing.html) you'll see that
growing filesystems on disk is easy if your last partition on the disk is swap.
You just delete the partition, grow the filesystem partition, and then recreate
the swap partition. It also makes it easy to change the size of the swap
partition.

The raw disk image downloadable from freebsd.org
(https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/12.1-RELEASE/amd64/Latest/FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-amd64.raw.xz)
is built with:
ada0p1: boot
ada0p2: swap
ada0p3: filesystem

The primary use case (I think) for these VM images is to serve as a base image
for a VM in a virtualization environment, which means that the vast majority of
users who download them will resize the partitions. They presumably will want
to resize and/or delete the swap partition as well.

If ada0p2 was the filesystem and ada0p3 was swap, this would be trivial. As it
is, the swap partition cannot easily be moved, resized, or deleted from a
virtual disk created from this image.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.