# Is there a graphical partition manager for FreeBSD?



## BLuFeNiX (Dec 17, 2012)

I am attempting to use FreeBSD as my primary OS (I've just switched from Ubuntu). I love gparted, but it seems that there is no gparted port for FreeBSD. I have searched the forums and everything I've found is either command-based or TUI. Is TUI the best I'm going to get?

Thanks!


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## fonz (Dec 17, 2012)

BLuFeNiX said:
			
		

> I love gparted, but it seems that there is no gparted port for FreeBSD.


According to its own documentation, gparted has limited support for UFS and no support for UFS2 or ZFS. It's therefore not very useful for FreeBSD.



			
				BLuFeNiX said:
			
		

> I have searched the forums and everything I've found is either command-based or TUI. Is TUI the best I'm going to get?


I think so, yes.

Seeing as you're coming from Ubuntu, you might want to check out PC-BSD instead. It's based on FreeBSD, but designed to be more pointy-clicky-Ubuntu-ish (perhaps they should have named it _BSDuntu_ instead).

Fonz


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## vermaden (Dec 17, 2012)

You can use sade() from the FreeBSD's _base system_:







... but You will probably end batter with the gpart() utility (both for MBR and GPT scheme):


```
# [color="Blue"][B]gpart status[/B][/color]
  Name  Status  Components
ada0p1      OK  ada0
ada0p2      OK  ada0
ada0p3      OK  ada0

# [color="blue"][B]gpart show  [/B][/color]
=>       34  312581741  ada0  GPT  (149G)
         34        256     1  freebsd-boot  (128k)
        290   33554432     2  freebsd-zfs  (16G)
   33554722  279027053     3  freebsd-zfs  (133G)
```


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## BLuFeNiX (Dec 17, 2012)

fonz said:
			
		

> According to its own documentation, gparted has limited support for UFS and no support for UFS2 or ZFS. It's therefore not very useful for FreeBSD.
> 
> 
> I think so, yes.
> ...



I've heard of PC-BSD, but I have no problem using the command line for most things. I prefer it for installing software, editing config files, etc. The one thing I always go graphical for is partitioning, but I guess I'll have to get a little closer to the metal 

Thank you for your quick response. Do you have a suggestion for the most feature-full TUI partition manager? I would love if it had an option to set up a RAID1 for me. I also have a Ubuntu and Windows 7 installation on my machine, and would like to be able to manage any/all partitions from one place.

Thanks!


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## BLuFeNiX (Dec 17, 2012)

vermaden said:
			
		

> You can use sade() from the FreeBSD's _base system_:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Wow, thanks. You even posted screenshots. I have used gpart a little in the past, I'll revisit it and I'll check out sade. Thanks!


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## TiberiusDuval (Dec 17, 2012)

fonz said:
			
		

> Seeing as you're coming from Ubuntu, you might want to check out PC-BSD instead. It's based on FreeBSD, but designed to be more pointy-clicky-Ubuntu-ish (perhaps they should have named it _BSDuntu_ instead).
> 
> Fonz



I use PC-BSD mainly because I do not want to go through big hassle to get working DE, but I want to use FreeBSD software and like consistency of system. But as far as I know PCBSD is just collection of certain utilities and and premade scripts over FreeBSD system. (Something like difference between plain Debian and for example Mint Debian) So if there is not FreeBSD version of something there certainly is not PC-BSD version of it. And as far as I know PC-BSD does not have graphical partition manager except in installer. 
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.


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## Goette (Dec 22, 2012)

TiberiusDuval said:
			
		

> I use PC-BSD mainly because I do not want to go through big hassle to get working DE, but I want to use FreeBSD software and like consistency of system. But as far as I know PCBSD is just collection of certain utilities and and premade scripts over FreeBSD system. (Something like difference between plain Debian and for example Mint Debian) So if there is not FreeBSD version of something there certainly is not PC-BSD version of it. And as far as I know PC-BSD does not have graphical partition manager except in installer.
> Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.



PCBSD is FreeBSD but provides some gui for install and a pbi manager to install "packages" like chrome and such, so you don't have to compile from source.

Of course, the freebsd ports and everything is 100% compatible, is like installing freebsd and spend a hundred hours configuring it.


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## nemeas (Dec 23, 2012)

Goette said:
			
		

> PCBSD is FreeBSD but provides some gui for install and a pbi manager to install "packages" like chrome and such, so you don't have to compile from source.
> 
> Of course, the freebsd ports and everything is 100% compatible, is like installing freebsd and spend a hundred hours configuring it.



And it gives you an easy root-on-zfs install


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## vermaden (Dec 23, 2012)

nemeas said:
			
		

> And it gives you an easy root-on-zfs install



... and support for ZFS Boot Environments with beadm


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 23, 2012)

BLuFeNiX said:
			
		

> Is TUI the best I'm going to get?


I guess TUI means "text user interface"? I've never heard that before. Don't you mean CLI (command line interface)? 

CLI is always the best you can get.


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## fonz (Dec 23, 2012)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> I guess TUI means "text user interface"? I've never heard that before.


One can bicker about whether or not it's an appropriate term in the first place, but in practice the fact of the matter is that TUI indeed stands for "text user interface" and is commonly used to refer to (n)curses-based interfaces.

Fonz


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## kpedersen (Dec 23, 2012)

Cool, I have been looking how to access the "sade" tool for a while now (since sysinstall was removed) and even then I was trying to work out how to use the tool directly rather than going through the sysinstall menus.

It is quite misleading because it is titled FDISK partition editor, so I always thought it was part of the FreeBSD fdisk program, and I just hadnt found the correct "interactive mode" parameter yet


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## wblock@ (Dec 23, 2012)

Please use gpart(8).  sade(8) has many of the same problems as fdisk(8).


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 24, 2012)

fonz said:
			
		

> One can bicker about whether or not it's an appropriate term in the first place, but in practice the fact of the matter is that TUI indeed stands for "text user interface"


Not bickering at all. I just never heard that before.


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## kpa (Dec 24, 2012)

Creating a GUI partition manager should be much easier now than it used to be. There's gpart(8) that has a robust text interface, a quick and dirty GUI could just call gpart(8) trough a shell. Also there's libgeom(3), with suitable bindings to for example python it shouldn't be too hard to create a graphical interface to GEOM managed disks and partition tables.


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## fonz (Dec 25, 2012)

kpa said:
			
		

> with suitable bindings to for example python it shouldn't be too hard to create a graphical interface to GEOM managed disks and partition tables.


Why drag Python into it when there's dialog(1)?

Fonz


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## fonz (Dec 25, 2012)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> Not bickering at all. I just never heard that before.


That's why I said: "one" 

Although I have yet to hear any good argument, there is a small minority of people who do object (rather vociferously, sometimes) to either the term TUI itself, or what it is commonly taken to mean, or both.

Fonz


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## kpa (Dec 26, 2012)

I was thinking of an X11 based GUI using for example x11-toolkits/py-tkinter


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## user00 (May 20, 2019)

If gparted already does 50% of the work at least, why would it be more difficult to teach it about ZFS etc, than writing a completely new tool from scratch? At least it can show some information about a FreeBSD drive, and an encrypted ZFS no less. Then the learning curve for the Linux refugees coming over to the FreeBSD side would not be as steep as it is now.


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## scottro (May 21, 2019)

For me, with my bad eyes, this forum makes the dates hard to read. Did you know you're replying to a 7 year old thread?

Doesn't TrueOS have a GUI partitioner? (I'm not sure if it does or not.)  If so, there's a chance it might make it into the FreeBSD base eventually.


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