default installimage.conf places swap as first partition about installimage HOT 4 CLOSED

Historically there have been a couple of cases, when the existing installations required changes, which were only possible due to this layout, e.g.

• when lilo was used and disk space was still a premium, we did not leave any space between MBR and the first partition. Much later grub need a post-MBR gap for stage 1.5.
• Converting MBR to GPT partition table, which requires more space at the beginning of the disk and adding a bios_grub partition
• Making more space for /boot (e.g. for system upgrade or additional/larger initrd for FDE)

Having swap at the beginning of the disks, creates some flexibilty for any future changes without requiring a re-install.

And there is also a simple technical reason/limitation. Because the size of the last partition can be specified as ALL, meaning the remaining space of the disk and usually the partition of the root filesystem, all fixed size partitions must come before

from installimage.

As always there are pros and cons for this default. And for exactly this reason a custom partition scheme can be passed.

from installimage.

What’s the pro of this default?

from installimage.

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

from installimage.