[GTALUG] long war story: growing the ESP (/boot/efi)

[Nicholas Krause]

On 7/8/21 12:55 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> | From: o1bigtenor via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
> 
> | On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 5:52 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
> | <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
> | >
> | > == why you might wish to grow the ESP ==
> | >
> | > In a UEFI system, booting starts with the ESP (EFI System Partition).
> | >
> | > Apparently Windows creates a 100M ESP during a fresh install.
> 
> | Does this also happen if there is no Win quotient in the partition?
> 
> If you are asking: how much does Windows add to the requirement for
> space?  I don't know.  Also: each manufacturer may decidedd to put
> more or less diagnostic software in the ESP too.
> 
> If you are asking: how big an ESP would a Linux installation create?
> I don't know.  The installers I use give a suggestion but let me
> override.
> 
> What's a good size for an ESP?  My current guess is that 200M is
> plenty and isn't too wasteful given how large disks are these days.
> 
> On my XPS 15 notebook (the one that prompted the adventure):
> Filesystem     1K-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda2         200623 95057    105566  48% /boot/efi
> (More was used during the firmware update.)
> 
> On my desktop SSD:
> Filesystem     1K-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sdb2         364544 65436    299108  18% /boot/efi
> (The last firmware update was in 2014.)
> 
> Blue sky uses of ESP:
> 
> I imagine, if you want a lean installation, you could eliminate grub and
> boot a linux kernel directly from UEFI.
> 
> - the kernel and initramdisk files would have to live in the ESP
> 
> - the kernel wuld have to be in .efi form
> 
> I'd love to get rid of a whole layer of software from the booting process.
> What does grub2 do for us?
Hugh,
Have you looked at:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFISTUB

Not sure of how much use it is for you. Not for me currently but may
be of interest.

Cheers,
Nick
> 
> - select what to boot (but most UEFI software lets you do that too)
> 
> - place the OS on filesystems/partitions other than the ESP
> 
> - fiddle about when things go wrong.  Especially when that thing is grub
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