Format properly

Terence64w · 2020-12-18 18:16:52

Dears,

reading the install-wiki I come to a point where i don"t understand properly.

In the fdisk guide tell by doing EFI System partition choosing " t 1" to press afterwards "a" to indicate the EFI-partition is bootable.

The See Also Link is not working.

Questions:
1. Should EFI partition be max 500 Mib?
2. Should, after type 1 (t 1) be pressed (a) to acknowledge "boot"?
3. Should swap be before or after (/)? or at all?
4. Making swap-partiton big enough (5 Gib bigger than RAM, my pc have more than 32 GB) will automatically activate hibernate?
5. Better a swapfile for hibernate or swap-partition?

Thanks in advance and best regards.

Ropid · 2020-12-18 20:03:27

1. There is no max limit. You can create a larger EFI partition if you want but it doesn't really make sense to create a very large EFI partition. 500MB is a good size.

2. You will see when using the program. Look at the messages it prints. There is no "a" command if you use a GPT partition table (which you need for UEFI boot). The "a" command is for MBR drives (the old DOS boot).

3. I like to put the swap partition at the very end of the drive, behind all other partitions. You can change the size in the future easily when the swap partition is at the end. If the swap partition is in the front of the drive somewhere, you can't change the size easily because it would involve moving the other partitions.

4a. You actually don't need a larger swap than your RAM for hibernate. You only need enough so that your current used memory fits into swap.

4b. The hibernate feature will not activate automatically. You have to set it up yourself like described in the hibernate ArchWiki article.

5. I don't have good arguments for which one to choose.

Trilby · 2020-12-18 20:33:07

For 3, the point above is very good - but other than that it doesn't matter: partitions can be in whatever order you want.

For 5, a swap partition was formerly required for linux to hibernate. This is no longer the case, and so I can see absolutely no reason at all to use a swap partition. A swap file offers some advantages including being trivial to resize / remove at any time if your needs change. Given these points, a swap file seems to obvious choice to me for new installations if swap is needed at all.

GSMiller · 2020-12-21 19:32:56

Terence64w, it does not matter how you put partitions. But if you want to resize later, there might be problems.

Arch Linux

#1 2020-12-18 18:16:52

Format properly

#2 2020-12-18 20:03:27

Re: Format properly

#3 2020-12-18 20:33:07

Re: Format properly

#4 2020-12-21 19:32:56

Re: Format properly

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