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Groups > linux.debian.user > #201503 > unrolled thread

Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted

Started byD&P Dimov <lddimov@yahoo.com>
First post2018-10-21 15:30 +0200
Last post2018-10-23 04:30 +0200
Articles 14 — 6 participants

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Contents

  Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted D&P Dimov <lddimov@yahoo.com> - 2018-10-21 15:30 +0200
    Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted Matthew Crews <mailinglists@mattcrews.com> - 2018-10-21 15:40 +0200
    Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2018-10-21 19:40 +0200
      Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted D&P Dimov <lddimov@yahoo.com> - 2018-10-21 19:50 +0200
      Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted Matthew Crews <mailinglists@mattcrews.com> - 2018-10-22 02:10 +0200
        Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted D&P Dimov <lddimov@yahoo.com> - 2018-10-22 04:20 +0200
          Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-10-22 07:10 +0200
        Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-10-22 06:00 +0200
          Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2018-10-22 14:50 +0200
            Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-10-22 18:00 +0200
              Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2018-10-22 19:50 +0200
                Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted Joe <joe@jretrading.com> - 2018-10-22 19:50 +0200
                  Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> - 2018-10-22 20:10 +0200
                Re: Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2018-10-23 04:30 +0200

#201503 — Won't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted

FromD&P Dimov <lddimov@yahoo.com>
Date2018-10-21 15:30 +0200
SubjectWon't boot if /, home, swap are encrypted
Message-ID<wLlXP-4B3-5@gated-at.bofh.it>
I did a new install of latest Debian 9.5 stable on a new Dell laptop. Debian is the only OS there now. If I encrypt /, home, and swap, it won't boot after install. If I leave them unencrypted, it boots fine. What am I missing?
Thanks!

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#201504

FromMatthew Crews <mailinglists@mattcrews.com>
Date2018-10-21 15:40 +0200
Message-ID<wLm7w-4Eb-3@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201503
On 10/21/18 6:25 AM, D&P Dimov wrote:
> I did a new install of latest Debian 9.5 stable on a new Dell laptop. Debian is the only OS there now. If I encrypt /, home, and swap, it won't boot after install. If I leave them unencrypted, it boots fine. What am I missing?
> Thanks!
> 

Did you remember to make an unencrypted /boot partition? The Debian
installer does not support encrypted /boot partition, you will need to
leave it unencrypted.

For example, see my current partition table:

matthew@matt-tower:~$ lsblk
NAME                  MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda                     8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk
├─sda1                  8:1    0 953.7M  0 part  /boot
├─sda2                  8:2    0     1K  0 part
└─sda5                  8:5    0 464.8G  0 part
  └─sda5_crypt        254:0    0 464.8G  0 crypt
    ├─root--swap-root 254:1    0   447G  0 lvm   /
    └─root--swap-swap 254:2    0  17.8G  0 lvm   [SWAP]
sdb                     8:16   0 931.5G  0 disk
└─sdb1                  8:17   0 931.5G  0 part
  └─sdb1_crypt        254:3    0 931.5G  0 crypt
    └─home-home       254:4    0 931.5G  0 lvm   /home

/boot is its own unencrypted partition, root and swap are in a LUKS
encryption, and /home is on its own hard disk (and also LUKS encrypted)

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#201516

FromRoberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org>
Date2018-10-21 19:40 +0200
Message-ID<wLpRL-6S7-5@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201503
On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 01:25:09PM +0000, D&P Dimov wrote:
> I did a new install of latest Debian 9.5 stable on a new Dell laptop. Debian is the only OS there now. If I encrypt /, home, and swap, it won't boot after install. If I leave them unencrypted, it boots fine. What am I missing?
> Thanks!
> 

It will be much easier to help you if you could post the complete output
of the boot sequence up to the failure.  If that is not possible, then
perhaps the last screenful or last few lines.  Or even a photograph of
the screen showing where the boot sequence is stuck.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

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#201517

FromD&P Dimov <lddimov@yahoo.com>
Date2018-10-21 19:50 +0200
Message-ID<wLq1r-6Vq-5@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201516

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

 Hi Roberto,
It was telling me that it was not finding anything to boot from. But I'm good now, I got it to boot and sent a message to the list a little while ago. Though I'm not sure why did it now but didn't do it earlier, after I tried a dozen different times...
    On Sunday, October 21, 2018, 1:31:08 PM EDT, Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> wrote:  
 
 On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 01:25:09PM +0000, D&P Dimov wrote:
> I did a new install of latest Debian 9.5 stable on a new Dell laptop. Debian is the only OS there now. If I encrypt /, home, and swap, it won't boot after install. If I leave them unencrypted, it boots fine. What am I missing?
> Thanks!
> 

It will be much easier to help you if you could post the complete output
of the boot sequence up to the failure.  If that is not possible, then
perhaps the last screenful or last few lines.  Or even a photograph of
the screen showing where the boot sequence is stuck.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez

  

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#201520

FromMatthew Crews <mailinglists@mattcrews.com>
Date2018-10-22 02:10 +0200
Message-ID<wLvXc-2hm-3@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201516

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Sunday, October 21, 2018 10:29 AM, Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 01:25:09PM +0000, D&P Dimov wrote:
>
> > I did a new install of latest Debian 9.5 stable on a new Dell laptop. Debian is the only OS there now. If I encrypt /, home, and swap, it won't boot after install. If I leave them unencrypted, it boots fine. What am I missing?
> > Thanks!
>
> It will be much easier to help you if you could post the complete output
> of the boot sequence up to the failure. If that is not possible, then
> perhaps the last screenful or last few lines. Or even a photograph of
> the screen showing where the boot sequence is stuck.

To satisfy my curiosity, I fired up a VM and in the VM used the Debian installer to automatically partition for an encrypted install, with separate /, /home, and /swap. It made a 1MB blank partition, 512MiB /boot/efi partition flagged as bootable, 244MiB /boot partition, and allocated the rest of the disk to the LUKS container. In the LUKS container contained /, /home, and /swap. See the attached picture.

After installation was complete, here is the output of lsblk.

NAME                        MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda                           8:0    0   20G  0 disk
├─sda1                        8:1    0  512M  0 part  /boot/efi
├─sda2                        8:2    0  244M  0 part  /boot
└─sda3                        8:3    0 19.3G  0 part
  └─sda3_crypt              254:0    0 19.3G  0 crypt
    ├─debian--vm--vg-root   254:1    0  6.4G  0 lvm   /
    ├─debian--vm--vg-swap_1 254:2    0    2G  0 lvm   [SWAP]
    └─debian--vm--vg-home   254:3    0 10.9G  0 lvm   /home
sr0                          11:0    1 55.3M  0 rom


It seems the best practice is:
1MB blank partition at the beginning of the drive
512MB EFI partition (or larger) mounted at /boot/efi, flagged as bootable
256MB /boot partition (or larger as desired), NOT flagged as bootable.
Then the rest of the drive partitioned as desired (ie a LUKS container)

If all of these conditions are met, then encrypted boot with EFI *should* work correctly.

So I'm at a loss, D&P Dimov, as to why you had difficulty. You said it was a config in your BIOS that you needed to change?

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#201522

FromD&P Dimov <lddimov@yahoo.com>
Date2018-10-22 04:20 +0200
Message-ID<wLxYZ-3vd-1@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201520

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

Dear Mathew,
Thank you for looking into this further.
I did not have to change anything in the BIOS - it was fine all along. Here are some differences from what you have and some of my issues:
1. I did not have a 1MB free space. I didn't know that I had to leave that free space. The Debian installation instructions regarding partitioning (https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/ch06s03.html.en#di-partition) show a table at the end of "6.3.3.2. Guided Partitioning" (which was achieved with Manual Partitioning, as per the table caption below it) that has free space, but there is no indication that it is required. The next section on that same webpage covers manual partitioning and doesn't indicate that free space requirement either. At the end, I installed and booted successfully into Debian without this free space.

2. The table from the debian instructions (referenced above) does not show a bootable EFI, only a bootable /boot. Though the text does specify "If you have booted in EFI mode then within the guided partitioningsetup there will be an additional partition, formatted as a FAT32bootable filesystem, for the EFI boot loader." I think that the instructions can be improved by showing an EFI partition like in the screenshot you sent. I think I also kept forcing the /boot to have a "Boot Flag: On". It seems counter intuitive, but apparently the /boot partition must not have a bootable flag - also something that maybe should be clarified in the instructions.
3. You keep referring to the EFI partition as being mounted on "/boot/efi", which I could do by manually typing this mount point, but this was not acceptable to the installer - it came back telling me that I don't have an EFI. So instead, the EFI needs to be selected from the menu, where it is listed under swap as "EFI System Partition". 

Next time I install Debian on another machine (should be soon), I think I'll do graphic install so I can take screenshots along the way and make a set of instructions for less experienced users like me. Encrypting the /, home, and swap was also not straight forward to me from the instructions - two videos by Rex Kneisley is what helped me figure out how to do it. (Though the encryption part was not the cause of not being able to boot into the newly installed system.) So I'll be sure to include screenshots of these steps as well. Any ideas as to where may be a good place to post such instructions and screenshots? Do you think anyone would be interested in including them with the official installation guide?
Thanks!



    On Sunday, October 21, 2018, 8:06:28 PM EDT, Matthew Crews <mailinglists@mattcrews.com> wrote:  
 
 ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Sunday, October 21, 2018 10:29 AM, Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 01:25:09PM +0000, D&P Dimov wrote:
>
> > I did a new install of latest Debian 9.5 stable on a new Dell laptop. Debian is the only OS there now. If I encrypt /, home, and swap, it won't boot after install. If I leave them unencrypted, it boots fine. What am I missing?
> > Thanks!
>
> It will be much easier to help you if you could post the complete output
> of the boot sequence up to the failure. If that is not possible, then
> perhaps the last screenful or last few lines. Or even a photograph of
> the screen showing where the boot sequence is stuck.

To satisfy my curiosity, I fired up a VM and in the VM used the Debian installer to automatically partition for an encrypted install, with separate /, /home, and /swap. It made a 1MB blank partition, 512MiB /boot/efi partition flagged as bootable, 244MiB /boot partition, and allocated the rest of the disk to the LUKS container. In the LUKS container contained /, /home, and /swap. See the attached picture.

After installation was complete, here is the output of lsblk.

NAME                        MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda                          8:0    0  20G  0 disk
├─sda1                        8:1    0  512M  0 part  /boot/efi
├─sda2                        8:2    0  244M  0 part  /boot
└─sda3                        8:3    0 19.3G  0 part
  └─sda3_crypt              254:0    0 19.3G  0 crypt
    ├─debian--vm--vg-root  254:1    0  6.4G  0 lvm  /
    ├─debian--vm--vg-swap_1 254:2    0    2G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
    └─debian--vm--vg-home  254:3    0 10.9G  0 lvm  /home
sr0                          11:0    1 55.3M  0 rom


It seems the best practice is:
1MB blank partition at the beginning of the drive
512MB EFI partition (or larger) mounted at /boot/efi, flagged as bootable
256MB /boot partition (or larger as desired), NOT flagged as bootable.
Then the rest of the drive partitioned as desired (ie a LUKS container)

If all of these conditions are met, then encrypted boot with EFI *should* work correctly.

So I'm at a loss, D&P Dimov, as to why you had difficulty. You said it was a config in your BIOS that you needed to change?  

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#201524

FromDavid Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
Date2018-10-22 07:10 +0200
Message-ID<wLADv-5aD-1@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201522
On Mon 22 Oct 2018 at 02:06:05 (+0000), D&P Dimov wrote:
> Dear Mathew,
> Thank you for looking into this further.
> I did not have to change anything in the BIOS - it was fine all along. Here are some differences from what you have and some of my issues:
> 1. I did not have a 1MB free space. I didn't know that I had to leave that free space. The Debian installation instructions regarding partitioning (https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/ch06s03.html.en#di-partition) show a table at the end of "6.3.3.2. Guided Partitioning" (which was achieved with Manual Partitioning, as per the table caption below it) that has free space, but there is no indication that it is required. The next section on that same webpage covers manual partitioning and doesn't indicate that free space requirement either. At the end, I installed and booted successfully into Debian without this free space.

That's a diagram showing some fairly old disks. From the second
column, you can see that they're both MBR partitioned. The first
partition likely starts at sector 63 and they'll show no free space
in the installer.

> 2. The table from the debian instructions (referenced above) does not show a bootable EFI, only a bootable /boot. Though the text does specify "If you have booted in EFI mode then within the guided partitioningsetup there will be an additional partition, formatted as a FAT32bootable filesystem, for the EFI boot loader." I think that the instructions can be improved by showing an EFI partition like in the screenshot you sent. I think I also kept forcing the /boot to have a "Boot Flag: On". It seems counter intuitive, but apparently the /boot partition must not have a bootable flag - also something that maybe should be clarified in the instructions.

I don't know how an ESP is displayed on an MBR disk. I would assume
from the text that partition 2 on disk 2 is meant to represent one
as it has a FAT filesystem and is of a suitable size.

Without knowing more about the motherboard running the computer (yours
and the one in the manual), it's hard to be specific about exactly
what will successfully boot. The system shown could be booting in BIOS
mode, in which case MBR disk 1 has a bootable partition which some
BIOSes allegedly require. OTOH it could be booting in EFI mode in
which case the firmware might find the required ESP on disk 2.
But whi knows.

> 3. You keep referring to the EFI partition as being mounted on "/boot/efi", which I could do by manually typing this mount point, but this was not acceptable to the installer - it came back telling me that I don't have an EFI. So instead, the EFI needs to be selected from the menu, where it is listed under swap as "EFI System Partition". 

AIUI the ESP is normally mounted on /boot/efi when the installed
system is running, as that's where grub-install expects to find it.
But during installation, it's just a separate partition that you
either create yourself or let the installer create for you.
I thought the installer handles the ESP itself at the step
"Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk".

> Next time I install Debian on another machine (should be soon), I think I'll do graphic install so I can take screenshots along the way and make a set of instructions for less experienced users like me. Encrypting the /, home, and swap was also not straight forward to me from the instructions - two videos by Rex Kneisley is what helped me figure out how to do it. (Though the encryption part was not the cause of not being able to boot into the newly installed system.) So I'll be sure to include screenshots of these steps as well. Any ideas as to where may be a good place to post such instructions and screenshots? Do you think anyone would be interested in including them with the official installation guide?

Well, it certainly looks as if they could do with an update.

Cheers,
David.

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#201523

FromDavid Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
Date2018-10-22 06:00 +0200
Message-ID<wLzxL-4fr-5@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201520
On Mon 22 Oct 2018 at 00:05:45 (+0000), Matthew Crews wrote:
> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
> On Sunday, October 21, 2018 10:29 AM, Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Oct 21, 2018 at 01:25:09PM +0000, D&P Dimov wrote:
> >
> > > I did a new install of latest Debian 9.5 stable on a new Dell laptop. Debian is the only OS there now. If I encrypt /, home, and swap, it won't boot after install. If I leave them unencrypted, it boots fine. What am I missing?
> > > Thanks!
> >
> > It will be much easier to help you if you could post the complete output
> > of the boot sequence up to the failure. If that is not possible, then
> > perhaps the last screenful or last few lines. Or even a photograph of
> > the screen showing where the boot sequence is stuck.
> 
> To satisfy my curiosity, I fired up a VM and in the VM used the Debian installer to automatically partition for an encrypted install, with separate /, /home, and /swap. It made a 1MB blank partition, 512MiB /boot/efi partition flagged as bootable, 244MiB /boot partition, and allocated the rest of the disk to the LUKS container. In the LUKS container contained /, /home, and /swap. See the attached picture.

It needs to be pointed out that the 1MB FREE SPACE at the start of the
disk (and the one at the end) is not a blank partition: it is free space.

> After installation was complete, here is the output of lsblk.
> 
> NAME                        MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
> sda                           8:0    0   20G  0 disk
> ├─sda1                        8:1    0  512M  0 part  /boot/efi
> ├─sda2                        8:2    0  244M  0 part  /boot
> └─sda3                        8:3    0 19.3G  0 part
>   └─sda3_crypt              254:0    0 19.3G  0 crypt
>     ├─debian--vm--vg-root   254:1    0  6.4G  0 lvm   /
>     ├─debian--vm--vg-swap_1 254:2    0    2G  0 lvm   [SWAP]
>     └─debian--vm--vg-home   254:3    0 10.9G  0 lvm   /home
> sr0                          11:0    1 55.3M  0 rom
> 
> 
> It seems the best practice is:
> 1MB blank partition at the beginning of the drive

Noted above. This is to give you partition alignment of 1MiB for
efficiency. For GPT disks like this, I also add a 3MiB partition
(giving me 4MiB alignment) set to "BIOS boot" which, like it says,
allows it to be booted in legacy mode if ever required.

> 512MB EFI partition (or larger) mounted at /boot/efi, flagged as bootable
> 256MB /boot partition (or larger as desired), NOT flagged as bootable.
> Then the rest of the drive partitioned as desired (ie a LUKS container)
> 
> If all of these conditions are met, then encrypted boot with EFI *should* work correctly.
> 
> So I'm at a loss, D&P Dimov, as to why you had difficulty. You said it was a config in your BIOS that you needed to change?

Cheers,
David.

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#201526

FromPascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org>
Date2018-10-22 14:50 +0200
Message-ID<wLHOF-OM-5@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201523
Le 22/10/2018 à 05:50, David Wright a écrit :
> 
> Noted above. This is to give you partition alignment of 1MiB for
> efficiency. For GPT disks like this, I also add a 3MiB partition
> (giving me 4MiB alignment) set to "BIOS boot" which, like it says,
> allows it to be booted in legacy mode if ever required.

Why do you need 4 MiB alignment ?

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#201531

FromDavid Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
Date2018-10-22 18:00 +0200
Message-ID<wLKMx-2x6-3@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201526
On Mon 22 Oct 2018 at 14:42:09 (+0200), Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> Le 22/10/2018 à 05:50, David Wright a écrit :
> > 
> > Noted above. This is to give you partition alignment of 1MiB for
> > efficiency. For GPT disks like this, I also add a 3MiB partition
> > (giving me 4MiB alignment) set to "BIOS boot" which, like it says,
> > allows it to be booted in legacy mode if ever required.
> 
> Why do you need 4 MiB alignment ?

As you probably know, I don't. Is there any harm in always rounding
up? I'm just generous to Grub and its ilk. When you read posts about
partitioning, you realise there are some really stingy people out
there. They would probably be calculating a size that squeezes it into
the space before 1MiB.

Cheers,
David.

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#201533

FromPascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org>
Date2018-10-22 19:50 +0200
Message-ID<wLMuZ-3Ao-1@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201531
Le 22/10/2018 à 17:49, David Wright a écrit :
> On Mon 22 Oct 2018 at 14:42:09 (+0200), Pascal Hambourg wrote:
>> Le 22/10/2018 à 05:50, David Wright a écrit :
>>>
>>> Noted above. This is to give you partition alignment of 1MiB for
>>> efficiency. For GPT disks like this, I also add a 3MiB partition
>>> (giving me 4MiB alignment) set to "BIOS boot" which, like it says,
>>> allows it to be booted in legacy mode if ever required.
>>
>> Why do you need 4 MiB alignment ?
> 
> As you probably know, I don't.

No, I didn't know, so I was curious. You may use an SSD with an uncommon 
4 MiB erase block size. Less than one hour after I posted the question, 
I read a post from someone who considered converting partitions into LVM 
logical volumes without moving data and was fortunate they used 4 MiB 
alignment, as LVM uses 4 MiB blocks (extents) by default.

> Is there any harm in always rounding up?

It wastes space.

> I'm just generous to Grub and its ilk.

GRUB does not even need a MiB BIOS boot partition. AFAICS, the biggest 
generated core image embedding all required drivers fits into 128 KiB.

> When you read posts about
> partitioning, you realise there are some really stingy people out
> there. They would probably be calculating a size that squeezes it into
> the space before 1MiB.

This is what I do when converting a disk from DOS/MBR to GPT. There is 
plenty of space for a BIOS boot partition between the GPT partition 
table and 1 MiB, and the BIOS boot partition does not need to be aligned 
(no write performance issue).

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#201534

FromJoe <joe@jretrading.com>
Date2018-10-22 19:50 +0200
Message-ID<wLMv0-3Ao-5@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201533
On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:41:09 +0200
Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> wrote:


> 
> GRUB does not even need a MiB BIOS boot partition. AFAICS, the
> biggest generated core image embedding all required drivers fits into
> 128 KiB.

But all kernels get upgraded, and many people like to keep a spare one
around, just in case...

-- 
Joe

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#201535

FromPascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org>
Date2018-10-22 20:10 +0200
Message-ID<wLMOm-3Wk-11@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201534
Le 22/10/2018 à 19:48, Joe a écrit :
> On Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:41:09 +0200
> Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>
>> GRUB does not even need a MiB BIOS boot partition. AFAICS, the
>> biggest generated core image embedding all required drivers fits into
>> 128 KiB.
> 
> But all kernels get upgraded, and many people like to keep a spare one
> around, just in case...

A BIOS boot partition is not to be confused with a /boot partition. It 
only serves to store a (one single) GRUB core image, not Linux kernel 
images.

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#201536

FromDavid Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
Date2018-10-23 04:30 +0200
Message-ID<wLUCd-8X-5@gated-at.bofh.it>
In reply to#201533
On Mon 22 Oct 2018 at 19:41:09 (+0200), Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> Le 22/10/2018 à 17:49, David Wright a écrit :
> > On Mon 22 Oct 2018 at 14:42:09 (+0200), Pascal Hambourg wrote:
> > > Le 22/10/2018 à 05:50, David Wright a écrit :
> > > > 
> > > > Noted above. This is to give you partition alignment of 1MiB for
> > > > efficiency. For GPT disks like this, I also add a 3MiB partition
> > > > (giving me 4MiB alignment) set to "BIOS boot" which, like it says,
> > > > allows it to be booted in legacy mode if ever required.
> > > 
> > > Why do you need 4 MiB alignment ?
> > 
> > As you probably know, I don't.
> 
> No, I didn't know, so I was curious. You may use an SSD with an
> uncommon 4 MiB erase block size. Less than one hour after I posted the
> question, I read a post from someone who considered converting
> partitions into LVM logical volumes without moving data and was
> fortunate they used 4 MiB alignment, as LVM uses 4 MiB blocks
> (extents) by default.

Sorry to make the assumption. For me, disks are spinning rust and SSDs
are something for the future. Perhaps. If I'm fortunate.

> > Is there any harm in always rounding up?
> 
> It wastes space.
> 
> > I'm just generous to Grub and its ilk.
> 
> GRUB does not even need a MiB BIOS boot partition. AFAICS, the biggest
> generated core image embedding all required drivers fits into 128 KiB.
> 
> > When you read posts about
> > partitioning, you realise there are some really stingy people out
> > there. They would probably be calculating a size that squeezes it into
> > the space before 1MiB.
> 
> This is what I do when converting a disk from DOS/MBR to GPT. There is
> plenty of space for a BIOS boot partition between the GPT partition
> table and 1 MiB, and the BIOS boot partition does not need to be
> aligned (no write performance issue).

The ones I've converted were old/relatively small (≤2TB) and had the
first partition starting at the traditional 63, so I'm repartitioning
from scratch anyway. But I can't get worked up over the odd MB. I've
seen big disks where the first partition starts at 2048 which is 8MiB
for 4K sector size.

Cheers,
David.

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