(Solved) LMDE 5 installing on Btrfs

[Nuts2u]

Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Here is my dilemma I create and format a btrfs partition with some specific parameters, create the @ subvol and the @home subvol, set the btrfs profile to dup for metadat and system leaving data as single. When I launch the LMDE5 installer, and I get to the partioning section, I pick manual partion, pick out the custom formatted partition as the / , but the installer insists on reformating that partition, thereby wiping out all my customizations.

Anybody have an idea around this issue?

[MLED4]

Use the debian netinstall method for filesystem solutions not supported by the lmde installer.

[Nuts2u]

Thanks for the suggestion, but the netinstall also wants to format the already created and formatted custom btrfs partition I made. Looks like I'm just going to need to wait until the btrfs devs come up with a conversion tool to allow the changing of btrfs csum from crc32 (the default) to a different csum value. Not a deal breaker in anyway.

[MLED4]

Ah, in that case, install lmde to a different partition then create the target system with the same uuid for the root partition, to make things slightly easier.
Then copy all the files over from the installed system to the target partition, then chroot into it using the debian netinstall in rescue mode and install grub and update grub and anything else you might need to do. There's a guide to it online but you can figure it out by tinkering, i've found.

[Nuts2u]

Thanks for your suggestion, I did that first time around, hoping to avoid a reinstall. I rsync'd both @/ and @home to another partition, recreated the original btrfs partition with my modifications, then rsync'd @/ and @home back. I did the chroot grub dance and all went well. Rebooted and system came up but Cinnamon had a few strange issues. The biggest one was when I insert a usb device on any usb port on my computer, it would mount it with the error "no program assigned to display contents". Weird so I right click and pick Nemo as the program to use to open the folder, click ok, no errors, but when I click on the icon the error is repeated. So I can see the mounted usb device on the desktop, but cannot view the contents. I'm going to do alot of experimenting on this upcoming Saturday, to see if I can figure out what is causing these quirks.

[Nuts2u]

Well after extensive testing Ive decided to leave this little project of mine alone. I wanted to change the btrfs csum from crc32 to xxhash, but it seems that causes all kinds of issues. So I'm going to mark this thread as solved.

[superlinuxero]

If you want to install LMDE with BTRFS subvolumes you can check this how-to in YouTube:

https://youtu.be/IlQjgxShkd8