Arch Linux

TerminalFrost

Member

From: Syd/Au

Registered: 2023-09-11

Posts: 8

[SOLVED] Quick sanity check: converting a debian and win laptop

Hi guys,

Just want to repurpose my HP Dragonfly G2 on which I have:

• nvme0n1p1: an EFI Partition of only 260M,
  nvme0n1p2 - 4: a 268G Windows (needs to stay) plus recovery environment and
  nvme0n1p5 - 9: the remainder of the disk a Debian system where all is up for grabs except for p9 which is a home that has virtual machines and other homey type stuff I want to retain.

nvme0n1p5: 23.3G /
nvme0n1p6: 9.1G /var
nvme0n1p7: 977M swap
nvme0n1p8: 1.8G /tmp
nvme0n1p9: 169G /home 

A couple of things I wanted to run past you guys.

1) Installation recommends no less than 300MB for EFI, especially if multiple kernels are desired/required - I expect if I try to resize things to fix this I will lose my Windows environment - or at least incur a lot of stuffing around to recover it...  The EFI partition currently only points to the current Debian install and Windows.

2) The remainder of the disk after Windows and it's recovery space is all up for grabs except the /home, which I intend to mount in my Arch as /home.

Any recommendations about this situation?  I was considering simply repurposing the existing partitions in more or less the same shape and sizes for a clean Arch build.
Since this is my first approach I wanted to see what you think so I don't have to go around (too much!)

TIA
Will

Last edited by TerminalFrost (2023-09-12 12:34:23)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,237

Re: [SOLVED] Quick sanity check: converting a debian and win laptop

1) 260MB is more than enough for three different kernels, so should generally be sufficient, given that Arch does not generally retain old kernel images you won't have that much change or growth here. This is assuming you are going to use the ESP for /boot. If you use a bootloader that can read the kernel image from a linux filesystem (e.g. GRUB/refind) the size of the ESP becomes basically irrelevant.  What's more interesting here in impacting where you want to boot it and which bootloader you want to employ, are you going to setup disk encryption and/or secure boot or any of the sort?

2) The rest sounds ok and as partitioning goes that's going to be opinionated no matter who you ask, so I've you've ran with this setup and are happy with it you do you. Case in point, I'd not have a distinct tmp (by default on Arch that will be a tmpfs the size of half your RAM by default, if you have sufficient RAM that's generally going to be enough for most /tmp usecases, I'd not necessarily split away /var but you can do that, one thing you'll want to be weary of in that case that pacman's cache of downloaded packages will land in /var/cache/pacman/pkg by default and are not automatically cleaned (but there are tools that can help you here and you can setup hooks that will only keep e.g. the last two versions of packages in the cache) so those can add up quite quickly.

I also generally consider 20/30GB of root to be quite little depending on what you want to do, but I'm suspecting if it was sufficient for you on debian it will also suffice on Arch.

Last edited by V1del (2023-09-11 13:16:03)

TerminalFrost

Member

From: Syd/Au

Registered: 2023-09-11

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Quick sanity check: converting a debian and win laptop

Thank you for this excellent and informative reply V1del.

I appreciate the comments on the size of the ESP, and to simplify the process for the existing Windows partition I guess I am going to use the existing partition and leverage the current config that loads Windows reliably (though I did have the bitlocker recovery issue that will very likely happen again when I stuff around with the disk partitions but I don't know that for sure). 

As far as secure boot is concerned, I actually had trouble with that on the Debian build and may shy away on this round - and whilst I want to target a working install for the short term I know I will be wanting to have another run at it once I find my bearings - hence the importance of getting some key criteria right from the get go.  Your comments about partition sizes, var and tmpfs are very helpful, thank you. 

I will do more research on secure boot and likely adopt your suggestions on the partition scheme, but I am keen to get stuck in so I won't get into a paralysis by analysis.  I have a Windows backup and if the space remains reserved, even if I lose it I will be able to recover.

W

TerminalFrost

Member

From: Syd/Au

Registered: 2023-09-11

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Quick sanity check: converting a debian and win laptop

Marvelous, thanks for the advice, the installation went swimmingly.  I did manage to lose the windows boot loader entry but quick googling got that fixed in no time.

What a fantastic experience the Arch install was.  I'm now the proud owner of a super clean Arch KDE system and digging into the rest of the system components.  Very satisfying.
Thanks for the help - I ended up backing my home data, resizing that and going as suggested with a larger root (no var or tmp), 18G swap and slightly smaller home that I have restored everything to.  Had to do the bitlocker key dance with windows again but now all is as it should be.

W