[Solved] How big should /boot be?

goro9922 · 2022-05-17 03:08:18

According to the Installation Guide , the suggested size for /boot is 300MiB for UEFI with GPT. I'm not a newbie to ArchLinux, and my current system only uses 62 MiB for /boot.

What is the recommendation for the size of /boot? I'm planning to reinstall my OS.

Thank you!

Last edited by goro9922 (2022-05-25 06:43:45)

jasonwryan · 2022-05-17 03:16:01

How many kernels do you plan on installing? I have two, a custom one and vanilla arch, with initramfs for mkinitcpio and dracut for both, plus fallbacks, and that only uses 150M.

There is no "recommended size" as everyone does things differently here.

Trilby · 2022-05-17 03:25:30

/boot should be just big enough for /foot, but a little extra room for /wool-sock wouldn't hurt even if you do not have current plans to trudge through deep snow as you might some time down the line.

Are a couple hundred MB really of any concern? How constrained are you for disk space? Why are you planning on "reinstalling"? There is very very rarely any need to do so.

goro9922 · 2022-05-17 05:38:58

That's funny Trilby!
Is re-installing a bad thing? I hope not. I thought maybe I'd learn something that I didn't last time.

goro9922 · 2022-05-17 05:50:40

asonwryan wrote:

How many kernels do you plan on installing?

I usually only install one.

I wish the install guide for ArchLinux gave a little more guidance.

jasonwryan · 2022-05-17 09:05:15

goro9922 wrote:

I wish the install guide for ArchLinux gave a little more guidance.

Well, you quoted the recommended size, which seems more than adequate for your needs. If you are concerned it may not be enough/too much, install on LVM and scale it as necessary.

Trilby · 2022-05-17 11:17:05

goro9922 wrote:

Is re-installing a bad thing? I hope not.

It is very rarely called for and generally wastes learning opportunities. So in that sense I certainly see it as not good.

goro9922 wrote:

I thought maybe I'd learn something that I didn't last time.

If your goal is to learn, then reinstalling is definitely a bad idea. If you want to learn about your system, fix / maintain it. Don't throw it out just to get a fresh start.

That said, switching to LVM as suggested above could be a reasonable cause to start fresh ... if you want to use LVM.

goro9922 · 2022-05-17 15:24:18

I have 3 SSDs in my system and the wiring is very cluttered. I recently purchased a 1 TB SSD that should allow me to consolidate everything. Plus I've never had a /boot partition so I thought it would be a good time to try to create one.

I know how to backup and restore /home, but I don't know how to do that for /. Sounds like it'd be easier jut to reinstall everything from scratch.

goro9922 · 2022-05-25 04:53:36

(Solved) I went ahead and rebuilt my system. I'm so happy that I did, as I figured out how to create an EFI partition (I used gparted). Everything went so smoothly and I just used rsync to restore my home directory.

Installing Arch isn't so hard after all. I only tripped on forgetting to install netctl, but managed to use pacstrap to install it from the USB.

jasonwryan · 2022-05-25 05:08:45

goro9922 wrote:

Installing Arch isn't so hard after all.

No. The documentation does all the heavy lifting.

Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

Arch Linux

#1 2022-05-17 03:08:18

[Solved] How big should /boot be?

#2 2022-05-17 03:16:01

Re: [Solved] How big should /boot be?

#3 2022-05-17 03:25:30

Re: [Solved] How big should /boot be?

#4 2022-05-17 05:38:58

Re: [Solved] How big should /boot be?

#5 2022-05-17 05:50:40

Re: [Solved] How big should /boot be?

#6 2022-05-17 09:05:15

Re: [Solved] How big should /boot be?

#7 2022-05-17 11:17:05

Re: [Solved] How big should /boot be?

#8 2022-05-17 15:24:18

Re: [Solved] How big should /boot be?

#9 2022-05-25 04:53:36

Re: [Solved] How big should /boot be?

#10 2022-05-25 05:08:45

Re: [Solved] How big should /boot be?

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