[SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

Cavsfan · 2018-09-12 18:42:22

I installed Windows 10 giving it less space than I probably should have and I was just wondering if on an UEFI system if the left side of the Arch Linux partition can be moved to the right?
I've moved the right side before with no issues but, I understand moving the left side can be a big deal.

I'm only asking this because I have a friend that moved the left side of Arch with Gparted and it would not boot. He had to re-install it. That was on a MBR partitioned system.

I've got about 30GB spare on Windows 10 and could just use my 2TB RAID0 SATA drive for anything else I need to install if I cannot move Arch.

Any helpful insight would be appreciated.

Last edited by Cavsfan (2018-09-25 20:20:41)

TheSaint · 2018-09-13 06:30:39

There souldn't be a problem, but be prepared with a backup. So if things go wrong just remake the partition wherever you like and cast the backup in it. The kernel will find the new partition, if all moving has gone right.

Last edited by TheSaint (2018-09-13 06:30:56)

Slithery · 2018-09-13 07:16:25

What do you mean by the 'Arch Linux EFI partition'?

You should only have one EFI partition for all of your OS's.

Cavsfan · 2018-09-14 16:01:51

TheSaint wrote:

There souldn't be a problem, but be prepared with a backup. So if things go wrong just remake the partition wherever you like and cast the backup in it. The kernel will find the new partition, if all moving has gone right.

Are you fairly sure about this? Do you know that is has worked firsthand?

Thanks for the reply.

Slithery wrote:

What do you mean by the 'Arch Linux EFI partition'?
You should only have one EFI partition for all of your OS's.

I 'm talking about the partition that contains Arch, mount point is / - scd6.

[cavsfan@ArchLinux ~]$ lsblk | grep sdc
sdc       8:32   0 447.1G  0 disk 
├─sdc1    8:33   0   550M  0 part /boot
├─sdc2    8:34   0    16M  0 part 
├─sdc3    8:35   0   150G  0 part 
├─sdc4    8:36   0   466M  0 part 
├─sdc5    8:37   0     4G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sdc6    8:38   0   155G  0 part 
├─sdc7    8:39   0  42.1G  0 part 
├─sdc8    8:40   0    40G  0 part 
└─sdc10   8:42   0    35G  0 part /Media

Perhaps sdc1 is the one you are referring to.

I'm booting Arch Linux, Windows 10 and openSUSE Tumbleweed and they all have entries in sdc1.

Thanks for the reply.

Slithery · 2018-09-14 16:06:10

You have your terminology incorrect, sdc1 is your EFI partition, sdc6 is your Arch root partition.
That's why I got confused, as EFI partitions are usually at the start of a drive thus there isn't any 'left' to move them to.

You may want to edit the thread title to this effect.

V1del · 2018-09-15 01:01:21

There's no reason that it shouldn't work, at most you will have to reinstall/reconfigure GRUB (which is what your friend should've done on MBR and with which I have first hand experience) but afaik GPT and EFI systems are largely independent of the exact sector positions for purposes of operating system loading, so you are unlikely to even need to do that. In any case, you should make a backup, there's always something that could go wrong with deep changes to partitions like that (regardless of whether it is theoretically possible, which it is)

Last edited by V1del (2018-09-15 01:01:43)

Cavsfan · 2018-09-20 00:24:40

Slithery wrote:

You have your terminology incorrect, sdc1 is your EFI partition, sdc6 is your Arch root partition.
That's why I got confused, as EFI partitions are usually at the start of a drive thus there isn't any 'left' to move them to.
You may want to edit the thread title to this effect.

I can't edit the title that I am aware of but, I thought Arch Linux EFI partition was OK or I would have just said EFI partition.
When I installed Windows 10 after formatting the SSD, it was going to provide a default 128MB EFI partition. Since I knew I was going to be multi-booting I needed it much bigger and found a way to get it 550MB.

Even then when I would go to install grub on say openSUSE with this command:

sudo grub2-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi/EFI/opensuse --bootloader-id=opensuse

I would get an error that there was no room on the partition and it would fail, when I knew better.

But, I found the solution. I won't take it up here as it is off topic but, I sure was glad to cure that problem.

V1del wrote:

There's no reason that it shouldn't work, at most you will have to reinstall/reconfigure GRUB (which is what your friend should've done on MBR and with which I have first hand experience) but afaik GPT and EFI systems are largely independent of the exact sector positions for purposes of operating system loading, so you are unlikely to even need to do that. In any case, you should make a backup, there's always something that could go wrong with deep changes to partitions like that (regardless of whether it is theoretically possible, which it is)

Thank you! I figured GPT partitions were different. I believe my friend tried a live CD to re-install grub and others were saying that you do not want to move the left side of Arch under any circumstance.
But, they were on Legacy/MBR partitioned systems with a max of 4 partitions. I don't know much about it but, I believe they are more particular.
I had moved the right side on my old PC but, never the left side.

TheSaint · 2018-09-22 00:28:42

Cavsfan wrote:

TheSaint wrote:
....
Are you fairly sure about this? Do you know that is has worked firsthand?

I didn't have this direct experience, but I believe that we may have the ESP anywhere in the storage media, just to mark it as EF00 and formatted as fat32. Is the BIOS to have the ability to determine which is the ESP partition. More than one will, of course, create some confusion, which several BIOS may not handle.

Cavsfan · 2018-09-25 19:36:07

TheSaint wrote:

Cavsfan wrote:
TheSaint wrote:
....
Are you fairly sure about this? Do you know that is has worked firsthand?
I didn't have this direct experience, but I believe that we may have the ESP anywhere in the storage media, just to mark it as EF00 and formatted as fat32. Is the BIOS to have the ability to determine which is the ESP partition. More than one will, of course, create some confusion, which several BIOS may not handle.

Ok, thanks seems fair - the ESP is on sdc1, untouched by me. I've backed my stuff up and I'm getting ready to do it. I've got a good BIOS.

Cavsfan · 2018-09-25 20:18:51

Everything went as smooth as it could have possibly gone. Not even a hiccup.

I moved my Arch partition sdc6 35GB to the right and grew it by about 6GB to make it 160GB.

As it turns out after I formatted the SSD and installed Windows 10 with all of the necessary partitions, then installed Arch Linux it was sdc6.

My custom grub was on openSUSE so, I did the moving with Gparted from there.

I changed the swap UUID in /etc/fstab on openSUSE and on it's default grub entry but, of course Arch would not let me get to it's fstab.

So, all I got was the 1 minute 30 second timeout because of the mismatched swap file and I was in.

I made Arch bigger even though it has almost 100GB free space. Also going to give Windows 10 back about 30GB.

Thanks much for the input. Now, I know I can do this again if ever needed.

Arch Linux

#1 2018-09-12 18:42:22

[SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

#2 2018-09-13 06:30:39

Re: [SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

#3 2018-09-13 07:16:25

Re: [SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

#4 2018-09-14 16:01:51

Re: [SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

#5 2018-09-14 16:06:10

Re: [SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

#6 2018-09-15 01:01:21

Re: [SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

#7 2018-09-20 00:24:40

Re: [SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

#8 2018-09-22 00:28:42

Re: [SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

#9 2018-09-25 19:36:07

Re: [SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

#10 2018-09-25 20:18:51

Re: [SOLVED] Can the left side of the Arch Linux EFI partition be moved?

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