How to create LVM via Calamares for Lubuntu 18.10?

Question

This is for an install on a UEFI-based laptop with a GUID partition already in place.

There is only one disk I'm dealing with and it has partitions that I can't erase for provisional reasons (non-Linux). Therefore, manual partitioning has been my way up to this point.

I'm trying to install Lubuntu 18.10 with LUKS using LVM. I want to encrypt the entire partition holding distinct logical volumes (/, home, swap).

Currently, I already have Lubuntu installed with distinct partitions with only my home directory and swap encrypted.

I attempted to reinstall Lubuntu and came to find that the new installer seemingly supports what I'm seeking to do.

Here's what I've done so far:
1) Create boot partition and configure mount point
2) Create LVM2 PV partition and check encryption (inputting passphrase)
3) Attempt to create volume group

That's as far as I get.

I've looked online at Ubuntu's wiki/guide, whatever-you-call-it, and I've understood that to have a LV, you need a volume group—and to have a volume group, you need a physical volume. From what I see on the screen, I've created a physical volume. When I go to create a volume group, it recognizes it but when I hit OK, nothing happens.

I'm just stuck there with nothing to and I cannot proceed.

I've gone to Github and I'm 90% this is a Calamares limitation OR I'm just doing something wrong and I haven't caught on to it yet.

Does Calamares on Lubuntu even support what I'm trying to do and if not is there a way I can get some other GUI utility to do this for me? (yes, I'm that lazy)

TIA

Answer 1

It turns out that Calamres IS capable of installing with LVM, the process is just not intuitive as far as GUIs go.

WARNING: The following was only tested (by me) on Lubuntu 18.10.

The below assumes the following:
1) You will manually partition your device.
2) You are not implementing RAID (i.e. only using one disk).
3) You are aware of how to manually partition your disk via GUI (e.g. gparted).
4) You have backed-up your data and all critical partitions on your drive (e.g. OEM).
5) You know how to Google.

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Prerequisites:
To begin with, you will need to prepare the LVM partition, the physical volume, and the volume group before installing. You can get this done via the same live system you use to install the select distro--in this case, it's Lubuntu. If you aren't sure what those things mentioned above are, then please Google "LVM and Ubuntu" and read. Concerning the initial preparation, there are two ways I found to get this done: one was via the terminal using the pvcreate and vgcreate commands. Optionally, and be aware that this may only apply to KDE-intuitive desktops, you may install KVPM. This tool is a front-end to manage your disk and create the necessary LVM. Once you have the physical volume and volume group setup, you may proceed with the installer.

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Installing/Calamares/Live-USB:
Run the installer and for this "tutorial", manual partition will be selected for the partitioning section. You will be shown a representation of what is available in the physical volume you created beforehand. To change the "device", hit the drop down menu that shows the disklike icon just above the main content. Select the hard disk option. You will now be shown the view of what partitions you actually have on your disk (including the LVM partition). Configure your boot partition with the appropriate file system, mount point, and flags. Next, hit the same drop down menu and click on the LVM PV (physical volume) which you were viewing before. Now, go ahead and create/configure the partitions of your choosing (e.g. /, home, swap).

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That's it! You should be set to continue and let the installer do its magic.

Sorry if this doesn't help anyone. This could have been much more detailed but I couldn't find useful images online for what I did.