Questions about installing Arch on uefi

lajdnfgyoiua · 2022-07-22 21:30:45

Hello! I was using Arch on old laptop (with bios) for a while and I want to install it on my pc (witch has motherboard with uefi) and after reading guide and some discussions on forum I have couple of question mainly about partitioning and swap.
On my laptop I did this

/dev/sdb1           2048  62916607  62914560    30G 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2       62916608  69208063   6291456     3G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3       69208064 937703087 868495024 414.1G 83 Linux

which is
root
swap
home
(And I have /dev/sda1 with 1Tb in addition)
And I'm realizing that 30G is too small for root. It feels like 200-300G is normal. But what about swap? Some forum discussions suggest that swap partition is not needed at all and you can just use swap file in case you need swap. Others suggest using 1/2 of your RAM which would be 16G if we are talking about my pc. So what is the right answer?
Second thing is, lets say I have 3 ssd. One I want to use for root (let it be /dev/sdX mounted to /mnt). Can I use other two as my home directory? Like mount both of them (/dev/sdY and /dev/sdZ) to /mnt/home ? Or is it a bad idea?
Third thing is uefi. I want to use GRUB and don't understand some moments about its installation on uefi. Grub page on wiki says this

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=esp --bootloader-id=GRUB

however I saw variants like

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi

or with more "info"

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=arch-grub --root-directory=/dev/root_partition

Do I need to make /boot/efi direction and mount there efi_system_partition? or /boot/ is enough? (this should be in fstab together with other stuff, right?)
Do I need to specify root-directory? How important is bootloader-id? I'm not planning on using two OSs.

Sorry if some of the questions are too obvious/stupid.

dakota · 2022-07-22 21:51:16

Why do you think 30 GB is too small for root?

Whether you need a swap partition or a swap file will depend on your usage. I have 16 GB RAM, but I hardly ever use more than 2 GB, so I don't use either a swap partition or file.

I am using 30 GB for "/", and 100 GB for "/home"

Cheers,

ewaller · 2022-07-22 21:55:37

I don't use GRUB, so I cannot help there. If you have a well behaved uEFI implementation on your system, I recommend EFISTUB and no boot loader.

I also don't use a swap partition. I use a swap file on my root partition and have swap enabled. I set the swap file size equal to my RAM size (16GB). On the other hand, I don't use hibernation; if I did, I think I would provide a larger swap space.
I don't often get into my swap space, and I am always amazed when I find I have. But, having swap that gets used on an intermittent, transient basis can smooth out low memory situations that would otherwise crash something. But, if it gets used more than occasionally it is a sure sign your system does not have enough memory.

loqs · 2022-07-22 22:08:07

lajdnfgyoiua wrote:

Second thing is, lets say I have 3 ssd. One I want to use for root (let it be /dev/sdX mounted to /mnt). Can I use other two as my home directory? Like mount both of them (/dev/sdY and /dev/sdZ) to /mnt/home ? Or is it a bad idea?

You can use LVM to abstract multiple devices to a single device which you could use a /home.
You can use RAID to provide increased performance or redundancy by using multiple devices.

lajdnfgyoiua · 2022-07-23 15:37:01

dakota wrote:

Why do you think 30 GB is too small for root?
Whether you need a swap partition or a swap file will depend on your usage. I have 16 GB RAM, but I hardly ever use more than 2 GB, so I don't use either a swap partition or file.
I am using 30 GB for "/", and 100 GB for "/home"
Cheers,

After some time of using Arch on my old laptop I reached 24/30G and I had to do pacman -Sc.
As about swap_partition and swap files - is it possible to create swap file at any time?

ewaller wrote:

I don't use GRUB, so I cannot help there. If you have a well behaved uEFI implementation on your system, I recommend EFISTUB and no boot loader.
I also don't use a swap partition. I use a swap file on my root partition and have swap enabled. I set the swap file size equal to my RAM size (16GB). On the other hand, I don't use hibernation; if I did, I think I would provide a larger swap space.
I don't often get into my swap space, and I am always amazed when I find I have. But, having swap that gets used on an intermittent, transient basis can smooth out low memory situations that would otherwise crash something. But, if it gets used more than occasionally it is a sure sign your system does not have enough memory.

Motherboard on my pc is pretty old (even though it uses uefi) so I'm not sure if this will work.

Maniaxx · 2022-07-23 20:35:55

lajdnfgyoiua wrote:

Grub page on wiki says this

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=esp --bootloader-id=GRUB

however I saw variants like

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi

The wiki also says:

Note: In the entire article esp denotes the mountpoint of the EFI system partition aka ESP.

'--efi-directory=/boot/efi' can be useful if you want to save space in the ESP so supplemental grub and kernel/initramfs files go into /boot (that can remain on root partition). Like this:

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --boot-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=Grub

lajdnfgyoiua wrote:

is it possible to create swap file at any time?

yes.

Last edited by Maniaxx (2022-07-23 20:42:58)

lajdnfgyoiua · 2022-07-24 18:02:37

Maniaxx wrote:

lajdnfgyoiua wrote:
Grub page on wiki says this
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=esp --bootloader-id=GRUB
however I saw variants like
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi
The wiki also says:
Note: In the entire article esp denotes the mountpoint of the EFI system partition aka ESP.
'--efi-directory=/boot/efi' can be useful if you want to save space in the ESP so supplemental grub and kernel/initramfs files go into /boot (that can remain on root partition). Like this:
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --boot-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=Grub
lajdnfgyoiua wrote:
is it possible to create swap file at any time?
yes.

Thanks, but what about bootloader-id, just "GRUB" or it doesn't matter? Also I'm looking at my win10 disk management section and it says that 100MB for esp is allocated however, in guides for installing arch on uefi up to 500MB is recommended. So what size is enough for any situation?

loqs · 2022-07-24 18:13:43

lajdnfgyoiua wrote:

Thanks, but what about bootloader-id, just "GRUB" or it doesn't matter? Also I'm looking at my win10 disk management section and it says that 100MB for esp is allocated however, in guides for installing arch on uefi up to 500MB is recommended. So what size is enough for any situation?

That depends a lot on if you are going to use the ESP as /boot in which case it will hold the kernels and initrds and would need to be significantly bigger than if it just has to hold the bootloaders.

afader · 2022-07-24 18:28:58

Here's my line FWIW

sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --boot-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB --modules="normal test efi_gop efi_uga search echo linux all_video gfxmenu gfxterm_background gfxterm_menu gfxterm loadenv configfile tpm" --disable-shim-lock

Arch Linux

#1 2022-07-22 21:30:45

Questions about installing Arch on uefi

#2 2022-07-22 21:51:16

Re: Questions about installing Arch on uefi

#3 2022-07-22 21:55:37

Re: Questions about installing Arch on uefi

#4 2022-07-22 22:08:07

Re: Questions about installing Arch on uefi

#5 2022-07-23 15:37:01

Re: Questions about installing Arch on uefi

#6 2022-07-23 20:35:55

Re: Questions about installing Arch on uefi

#7 2022-07-24 18:02:37

Re: Questions about installing Arch on uefi

#8 2022-07-24 18:13:43

Re: Questions about installing Arch on uefi

#9 2022-07-24 18:28:58

Re: Questions about installing Arch on uefi

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