Arch Linux

0liver

Member

Registered: 2014-05-20

Posts: 42

boot partition almost full

5 years ago when i made a new installation, i created a boot VFAT partition with 100 MB.
According to an installation guide this seemed big enough. Here is the layout:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GR16ukC9yGrMXYUg8

After todays system upgrade only 2MB free space is left for the boot partition. I suspect this will be unsufficient for the next upgrade.

The remainder of the disk is a 1TB LVM partition. I consider it too much a challenge to fiddle with pvmove/pvresize and relocate the LVM partition to get some space to enlarge the boot partition.

I admit to not understand why the loader images grow with each upgrade. Is there any way to get smaller images? (or in worst case suppress the generation of the fallback img.)

Any help is appreciated!

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 59,882

Re: boot partition almost full

a) remove the kms hook from mkinitcpio.conf to prevent the GPU firmwares from being embedded into the initramfs
b) disable the fallback initramfs (this is certainly no problem if you've some live distro that you can boot from if need be), see /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux*

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0liver

Member

Registered: 2014-05-20

Posts: 42

Re: boot partition almost full

thank you!
i don't have kms in hooks, only these:

HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode modconf block keymap encrypt lvm2 resume filesystems keyboard fsck)

and in /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset i have

# mkinitcpio preset file for the 'linux' package

ALL_kver="/boot/vmlinuz-linux"

PRESETS=('default' 'fallback')

default_image="/boot/initramfs-linux.img"

fallback_image="/boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img"
fallback_options="-S autodetect"

without fallback img, should this be this way? :

# mkinitcpio preset file for the 'linux' package

ALL_kver="/boot/vmlinuz-linux"

#PRESETS=('default' 'fallback')
PRESETS=('default')

default_image="/boot/initramfs-linux.img"

#fallback_image="/boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img"
#fallback_options="-S autodetect"

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,447

Re: boot partition almost full

Yep -- and manually remove the unnecessary fallback initramfs.

MS-DTYP

Member

Registered: 2020-05-01

Posts: 30

Re: boot partition almost full

If you use GRUB2, you can just move your /boot to the LVM partition and create the /efi partition with GRUB2.

whitesnow

Member

Registered: 2015-01-04

Posts: 54

Re: boot partition almost full

Just a Question:

Why exactly is it, that the firmware now gets included into each initramfs image, instead like before being only once in the boot partition?

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 59,882

Re: boot partition almost full

Are you asking about the CPU µcode and the microcode hook (afaik the GPU firmware, topic of this thread, has never been put on the boot partition what changed is nouveau support for GSP, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 5#p2154175 )

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whitesnow

Member

Registered: 2015-01-04

Posts: 54

Re: boot partition almost full

I am asking about the CPU µcode.
https://archlinux.org/news/mkinitcpio-h … microcode/

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 59,882

Re: boot partition almost full

My best guess for the motivation would be that it's probably UKI related, otherwise it doesn't matter and you don't have to use the microcode hook at all.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Microc … n_one_file

This method is preferred over #Microcode in a separate initramfs file since no additional boot parameter configuration is necessary.

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