Hello. My usual efi partition size has changed since my 1st install of CachyOS. Something in the CachyOS install or documentation has lead me to believe that some recent development or other has increased the safe efi partition size to 2GB. My previous understanding was the 550MB stated in the arch wiki, Nevertheless, unless I’m hurting for extra space, I’ve always made mine at 1GB, thinking I was, perhaps, a bit silly making it so big without reason. Now, after a cachyos install, I’ve consistently made it 2GB, even on a 32GB emmc drive where space is important. Now, I’ve begun looking into why it would be 2GB and I haven’t come up with an answer. After some searching, I can’t even find anywhere with an explanation that it’s recommended any larger than about 700MB. If there’s a good reason for making it 2GB then I will keep doing it, but if someone asks, I’d like to be able to tell them why I make it 2GB. Can someone please tell me why such a large efi partition is recommended by CachyOS?
can you please provide
sudo parted -lif you have created a /boot/efi , this do not required so much in space
In CachyOS for both systemd-boot and rEFInd boot managers, we only have one sole EFI partition, without an extra XBOOTLDR partition. This means that the kernel images and the initramfs files also live in the EFI partition, which necessitates having a large partition size.
For reference, I have two kernels installed at the moment. This already takes up 28% of the allocated 2Gs the EFI partition was allocated. Note that I’ve disabled the fallback initramfs generated by default by mkinitcpio. If I didn’t, space usage would easily double than what I have now. Hope that helps, thanks!
That would make sense, then. I take it it’s systemd boot that needs the images in efi since refind is known for scanning all partitions in search of the initramfs files. Thank you for the explanation. Now I can stop making it 2GB when only using grub in other distros.
Wow @PerfMonk . That’s the biggest root partition with separate home partition I’ve
ever seen. Was that a mistake? First time trying parted in CLI maybe? Or did I miss the size recommended by Cachy? (only joking and I couldn’t resist.)
/boot is not a mistake , it’s the old way , in this case , all kernels boot img are inside, and may boot if trouble on zfs
i said root.
for /root , it’s growing in time for size now i would say 50Go can be a good value for 5 to 10 years …
@PerfMonk’s is 277.4GB with a separate /home of 543GB. My apologies @PerfMonk . I only meant to make a small comment to help my joke, not ridicule your choice of partition size. And if it was a mistake, I’m sure you’re not the only one, even among just us in this chat. Or it could be that I’m unaware of the intricacies of ZFS. This is the first I’ve seen someone using it.
Those are zfs datasets (equivalent of btrfs subvolumes). They can grow to fill the whole disk. That why duf is reporting the disk size. I have not assigned any quotas to limit them. (quotas are usefull when you share disk with many users).
700mb - 1gb is enough.
The problem is having different bootloaders at once with 2 or 3 kernels. Then you need more almost 2gb, because each bootloader will use a different folder under /boot/ so you end up with the 3 kernels you want but 6 or 9 images of the same kernels in different /boot/ locations.
i personally have 1gb /boot, systemd-boot and nothing else. not grub no refind no problem. and not zram and no irritating SWAP partition. I never had a system crash in 20 years for not having SWAP partition and never will. Still most linux distros recommend “as much SWAP as RAM or double”. 32gb-64 swap? no, goodbye
in theory /boot could be 300mb, but you run into problems upgrading the kernel because the system will do unpacking and repacking operations in /boot so more than 300 is needed and it’s not worth the time or the workaround