this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] M_Reimer@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (5 children)

One small /boot which is also my EFI system partition.

And a partition for / which covers all the rest of the drive.

Partitioning only limits flexibility. At some time you will regret your choice of partition sizes.

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tbf, you can mitigate this problem by using lvm or btrfs with subvolumes.

[–] M_Reimer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I did that years ago and then kept fiddling with the lfs subvolume sizes. I see absolutely no advantages to make things more complicated than needed.

[–] kristoff@infosec.pub 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I dan't know if this is still valid but I used to be told to have different partitions for your system, logs and data (home directories) .. and have the swap-partition located in between them. This was to limit the distance the head has to move when reading from your system starts swapping.

But if you use a SSD drive, that is not valid anymore of course :-)

Kr.

[–] Molecular0079@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Nowadays you don't even need a /boot unless you're doing full disk encryption and I actually recommend keeping /boot on / if you're doing BTRFS root snapshots. Being able to include your kernel images in your snapshots makes rollbacks painlessly easy.

[–] mhz@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

UEFI forum made it a requirement for motherboard constructors (hp, dell, msi...) to make their UEFI implementation to be able to at least read fat(12/16/32) filesystems. That is why you need a fat(12/16/32) partition flagged ESP (efi system partition) for holding your boot files.

So, I dont think you can do that unless you fall back to the old outdated BIOS or you have some *nix filesystem in your uefi implementation which I dont trust.

[–] Molecular0079@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You're only partially correct. /boot doesn't have to also be your EFI partition. In fact, most distros by default will separate the two, with the EFI partition mounted at /boot/efi and /boot being a separate ext4 based partition. My suggestion is that, if you're running BTRFS, you should merge /boot and / as one partition. You're still free to have a FAT32-based EFI mounted at /boot/efi or better yet /efi.

[–] yum13241@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use systemd-boot and my mount point is /efi. /efi/EFI/ is where my bootloaders live.

If I rollback to an old enough snapshot, I have to reinstall my kernels from a chroot. It'd be cool if I could get around that.

[–] Molecular0079@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] yum13241@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Separate FAT32 part.

[–] mhz@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It has been a while since I used grub that I forgot tgat esp could only be used to hold the boot files residing on /boot/efi.

[–] Molecular0079@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am guessing you're on systemd-boot? Yeah, one of the reasons why I hesitate to use it is how it requires EFI contain the kernel images. I am currently using refind.

[–] mhz@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I'm on systemd-boot, it requires the kernel to be located in the ESP partition which I mount in /boot, resulting in cleaner setup.

[–] skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] Molecular0079@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've heard that you have to put in your encryption pw twice if you do it that way no?

Out of curiosity, what's stopping you from shrinking the partition and adding a swap partition?

[–] skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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[–] mhz@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

That is why one small (512Mib) ESP and one BTRFS partition occupying the rest of my drive is my go, I can isolate the root (/), var and home partitions using subvolumes.

Users who distro hope may need a separate /home partition.