Partitions

Always make sure to identify and select the correct device.

Otherwise, the following steps may result in unintended data loss.

  • Identify available disks
# rom, loop or airootfs may be ignore
lsblk
The next step is for NVMe drives only
  • Check the formatted logical block address (LBA) size
nvme id-ns -H /dev/nvme0n1 | grep "Relative Performance"

On the output example below the sector size in use (512 bytes) is not the optimal one:

LBA Format  0 : Metadata Size: 0   bytes - Data Size: 512 bytes - Relative Performance: 0x2 Good (in use)
LBA Format  1 : Metadata Size: 0   bytes - Data Size: 4096 bytes - Relative Performance: 0x1 Better

You can confirm it by running lsblk -td and looking at the LOG-SEC column value.

To change the logical block address size, you can use the nvme format command specifying the preferred value with the --lbaf parameter:

nvme format --lbaf=1 /dev/nvme0n1
  • Create the partitions
cfdisk /dev/the_disk_to_be_partitioned
PurposeSuggested sizePartition typeMount point
efi1 GiBEFI System/efi
swap8 GiBLinux filesystem[SWAP]
rootRemainderLinux filesystem/
  • Verify the partitions
fdisk -l /dev/partitioned_disk
  • Create an Ext4 fs for the root
mkfs.ext4 /dev/root_partition
  • Initialize the swap
mkswap /dev/swap_partition
  • Format the efi to FAT32
mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/efi_system_partition
  • Add a label to the efi partition
# This will be useful later on to set the rEFInd config
dosfslabel /dev/efi_system_partition ARCHIE_ESP
  • Add a label to the root partition
# This will be useful later on to set the root device
e2label /dev/root_partition ARCHIE_ROOT
  • Verify the result
lsblk --fs /dev/partioned_disk
  • Mount the root partition to /mnt
mount /dev/root_partition /mnt
  • Mount the efi partition to /mnt/efi
mount --mkdir /dev/efi_system_partition /mnt/efi
  • Enable the swap
swapon /dev/swap_partition
  • Check the mountpoints
lsblk /dev/partioned_disk

Notes

  • To identify available disks, the fdisk -l command provides all the necessary information, but lsblk is also a good alternative for a concise output

  • Make sure to set the correct type for the efi partition