Questions before installing Salix

[Themis]

Hello,

(This is not a problem, but I couldn’t find a suitable section in the forum to start this thread. If this is not the right place, then it will just have to be moved.)

So before installing Salix on my laptop, I’m looking for some advice.
This laptop comes with UEFI and has a 240GiB SSD with Windows on it. I won’t keep this OS. I’ve learned to use 3 partitions: /, swap and /home. For this new Linux adventure, I’d like to do things properly.
So, I was planning to do as follow:
– a 54GiB / partition (xfs);
– a 16GiB swap partition;
– a 170GiB /home partition (ext4).

But…
I’ve read on the guide that UEFI systems need a /boot partition so I’ll add one, of course, but here is where my questions start.
(1) How big should the /boot partition be? On my other PC (UEFI and SSD, too), I have a /boot/efi (vfat) partition of about 250MB. The Start-Up Guide says “If you prefer to let Salix do everything including partition management, just select AUTOPARTITION.”… Well, when I’ve installed Salix on a VM with the salix64-xfce-14.2 ISO, the Autopartition option was missing. This is no big deal, but I mention it anyway. Since it was not available, I had to do it manually. The VM didn’t seem to need a /boot partition, but I guess the computer will, and I couldn’t find any information on how big it really has to be.

(2) Since this laptop will be used for development purpose (mainly), is it relevant to have a separate /home partition? I’ve read here and there both people saying it is relevant and cleaner and people saying it’s making things more difficult to handle. I end up not knowing who to believe…

(3) On the “Partition Management with cfdisk” page, I read this:

Make this partition Bootable (with 'B'). Use the up and down arrow keys to select a particular partition, if there is more than one. The default partition type is 'Linux' so that partition is done.

Actually, still when installing Salix on a VM, the bootable option was just not available. Taping B made nothing, but I guess this is because the installation first made me use cgdisk (and cfdisk the second time… can’t figure out why, since I did the same things twice ).

(4) So the / partition should be xfs. Let’s say I have no separate /home partition. No problem for external HD, I guess? (Stupid question, but I’d rather be stupid for 2 minutes than remaining ignorant.)

These are all the questions that come to my mind for now.

[gapan]

I’ve read on the guide that UEFI systems need a /boot partition so I’ll add one, of course, but here is where my questions start.
(1) How big should the /boot partition be? On my other PC (UEFI and SSD, too), I have a /boot/efi (vfat) partition of about 250MB. The Start-Up Guide says “If you prefer to let Salix do everything including partition management, just select AUTOPARTITION.”… Well, when I’ve installed Salix on a VM with the salix64-xfce-14.2 ISO, the Autopartition option was missing. This is no big deal, but I mention it anyway. Since it was not available, I had to do it manually. The VM didn’t seem to need a /boot partition, but I guess the computer will, and I couldn’t find any information on how big it really has to be.

You don't really need a /boot partition, but you do need an EFI partition that is mounted in /boot/efi. The windows installation you have already has an EFI partition and you can reuse that.

250MB sounds good. My EFI partition in this laptop is 500MB. Only 40MB of that is really used...

The autopartition option is not available for EFI systems in the installer. If I remember correctly it was also removed for BIOS systems in 14.2. That part of the guide should probably be updated.

(2) Since this laptop will be used for development purpose (mainly), is it relevant to have a separate /home partition? I’ve read here and there both people saying it is relevant and cleaner and people saying it’s making things more difficult to handle. I end up not knowing who to believe…

I guess it's a matter of preference. I almost always use a separate /home. If you'll ever need to reinstall, it will make things a lot easier. I don't have one in the laptop I'm currently typing on, but that is because it only has a 32GB SSD, it wouldn't make much sense to split it into parts.

(3) On the “Partition Management with cfdisk” page, I read this:

Make this partition Bootable (with 'B'). Use the up and down arrow keys to select a particular partition, if there is more than one. The default partition type is 'Linux' so that partition is done.

Actually, still when installing Salix on a VM, the bootable option was just not available. Taping B made nothing, but I guess this is because the installation first made me use cgdisk (and cfdisk the second time… can’t figure out why, since I did the same things twice ).

Yes, that option is only relevant for cfdisk which is used for drives that use MBR. For drives that use GTP, like yours, cgdisk is used and there is no such option.

(4) So the / partition should be xfs. Let’s say I have no separate /home partition. No problem for external HD, I guess? (Stupid question, but I’d rather be stupid for 2 minutes than remaining ignorant.)

It's not mandatory to use XFS, you can use anything you like. The only issue is that if you choose BTRFS, you will need a /boot partition.

And no, external HDs can be anything, it doesn't matter.

[Themis]

Thanks for your reply, gapan.

You don't really need a /boot partition, but you do need an EFI partition that is mounted in /boot/efi. The windows installation you have already has an EFI partition and you can reuse that.

OK, so I just have to let it where it is, I guess.

The autopartition option is not available for EFI systems in the installer. If I remember correctly it was also removed for BIOS systems in 14.2. That part of the guide should probably be updated.

Same for BIOS systems indeed, since this was not available for my VM either.

I guess it's a matter of preference. I almost always use a separate /home. If you'll ever need to reinstall, it will make things a lot easier. I don't have one in the laptop I'm currently typing on, but that is because it only has a 32GB SSD, it wouldn't make much sense to split it into parts.

I see. I’ve asked the question because I’ve read that Linux doesn’t need that much space, especially the /home partition (if we use another HDD for data, which is my case), etc. So on my desktop PC, I had made a ±30GB / partition and a ±10GB /home one. Well, I don’t install that much software, but actually my / is 75% full and my /home has only ±1GB of free space left. That’s why I was asking. I don’t really know how big these two partitions should be so that my data feel at ease. But maybe the free space problem on my desktop PC comes from Ubuntu. I really don’t know.

(4) So the / partition should be xfs. Let’s say I have no separate /home partition. No problem for external HD, I guess? (Stupid question, but I’d rather be stupid for 2 minutes than remaining ignorant.)

It's not mandatory to use XFS, you can use anything you like. The only issue is that if you choose BTRFS, you will need a /boot partition.

OK. Then I can use XFS, that’s no big deal.

[mimosa]

The root partition is for your Linux system, how much space you need depends on what you install. Home contains per-user configuration and user data, the former is tiny, the latter just depends on how much data you have. So if you are installing over three partitions (/ or root, home, and a /boot/EFI partition) with plenty of room, it generally makes sense to give most room to /home. root needs 10-20 gb depending. If as gapan says space is tight, it may make less sense to have a separate /home, leaving you more flexible.

I personally don't do it like that: apart from /boot/efi (which I need because mine is a UEFI installation), I have everything in a single partition, but with a separate Data partition I symlink to from /home. The rationale for this is that if I were multibooting (though in fact it is a long time since I have run anything but Salix) each distro can symlink to the same data, while keeping distro-specific per-user configuration separate.

[Themis]

So, here we go, I’m trying to install Salix (14.2) on my laptop.
For now, EFI is the first choice on boot, and I have 2 partitions: one with the boot flag (FAT32, 100MB), one with Windows (NTFS-thing). Just to be clear: right now, Windows still launches perfectly.

When I try to install Salix, I encounter this problem. It prints me this:

Warning! Non-GPT or damaged disk detected! This program will attempt to convert to GPT form or repair damage to GPT data structures, but may not succeed. Use gdisk or another disk repair tool if you have a damaged GPT disk.

So I press any key, just as I’m asked to do, and then I get this:

Display is too small; it must be at least 80 × 14 characters!

That I really don’t understand… I’m not using a VM, my laptop screen is 14" and I didn’t change its resolution… But anyway, again, I press any key, and it tells me that:

This machine appears to be using EFI/UEFI, but no EFI System Partition was found. You’l need to make an EFI System Partition in order to boot from the hard drive.

I don’t understand the problem. The Windows version that got installed on this PC seems to be a Windows 7 Pro (64 bits). I can of course boot on a liveCD, use GParted to make the partitions I need, but I don’t want to do things without understanding how they work and why they have to be done.
I’ve read on the Start-Up Guide that the boot partition has to be ef00, but isn’t the actual one supposed to be ef00? I thought that the installation program would have detected it so that I could use it, but apparently, this is not the case…
I’m a bit lost.

[gapan]

Not sure but can you check if secureboot is disabled in the EFI settings? These should be accessible by pressing some key when the laptop boots. Disable it if it is enabled.

[DidierSpaier]

Possibly the FAT32 partition is not of type EFI. You can check with cfdisk, that can now handle gpt as well as dos partition tables.

[gapan]

Discard my previous comment. I read your post in a hurry, if you're booting in the installer, it is not a secureboot issue.

Can you exit the installer as soon as it starts and see what the output of:

Code: Select all

fdisk -l

is? Is there any partition with type "EFI"?

[Themis]

Thank you!

First, it seems that the CLI provided by Salix doesn’t recognize my screen resolution, so there are things I can’t see properly (if needed I can boot on a distro liveCD).

So, for what I’m able to read, here is what I got:

Code: Select all

root@salix64:/# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/ram14: 16 MiB, 16777216 bytes, 32768 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram15: 16 MiB, 16777216 bytes, 32768 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/sda: 223.6 GiB, 240057409536 bytes, 468862128 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xb1bf69fe

Device        Boot      Start           End      Sectors       Size   Id      Type
/dev/sda1   *           2048      206847       204800      100M   7     HPFS/NTFS/e
/dev/sda2            206949  468856831  468649984   223.5G   7     HPFS/NTFS/e

I can’t see the whole types, so this is pretty much all I got. Do you want me to do it again on a liveCD, maybe?

[DidierSpaier]

. Do you want me to do it again on a liveCD, maybe?

It's not necessary, as obviously /dev/sda1 is a generic Microsoft Data Partition, not an EFI one.

So you will have to reformat it as EFI (actually, changing only the partition type).

You will also need to change the partition type of /dev/sda2 to become a Linux partition so the the installer can recognize it as such and put one of the proposed Linux file systems in it.

You may take this occasion to create more partitions if you want.

For the records I have suggested that the Slackware installer accepts to put a Linux file system in a Microsoft Data Partition as this works, but this has not been accepted so far.