Partitioning notes
Partitioning for a modern Linux distribution is generally very simple, however the introduction of GPT and UEFI booting does bring new complexity to the process. When creating your new partition table you will need a partition for the root filesystem, along with a swap partition and possibly another partition or two to facilitate booting, if required.
Note that if the disk has already been initialised, the top of the cfdisk
screen will show the partition layout already present: Label: dos
for the MBR
scheme, Label: gpt
for the GPT scheme. If you just want to erase the partition
table before starting the installer, use wipefs(8)
. Otherwise, you can run
cfdisk(8)
manually with the -z
option to start with an uninitialised disk
layout; cfdisk
will prompt you for the label type before continuing to the
main screen.
The following sections will detail the options for partition configuration.
BIOS system notes
It is recommended that you create an MBR partition table if you are using a BIOS boot system. This will limit the number of partitions you create to four. It is possible to install a GPT partition table on a BIOS system, but grub will need a special partition to boot properly.
UEFI system notes
UEFI users are recommended to create a GPT partition table. UEFI booting with
grub also requires a special partition of the type EFI System
with a vfat
filesystem mounted at /boot/efi
. A reasonable size for this partition could be
between 200MB and 1GB. With this partition setup during the live image
installation, the installer should successfully set up the bootloader
automatically.
Swap partitions
A swap partition is not strictly required, but recommended for systems with low RAM. If you want to use hibernation, you will need a swap partition. The following table has recommendations for swap partition size.
System RAM | Recommended swap space | Swap space if using hibernation |
---|---|---|
< 2GB | 2x the amount of RAM | 3x the amount of RAM |
2-8GB | Equal to amount of RAM | 2x the amount of RAM |
8-64GB | At least 4GB | 1.5x the amount of RAM |
64GB | At least 4GB | Hibernation not recommended |
Boot partition (optional)
On most modern systems, a separate /boot
partition is no longer necessary to
boot properly. If you choose to use one, remember that Void does not remove old
kernels after updates by default and each image will take at least 20MB, so plan
accordingly.
Other partitions
It is fine to install your system with only a large root partition, but you may
create other partitions if you want. One helpful addition could be a separate
partition for your /home
directory. This way if you need to reinstall Void (or
another distribution) you can save the data and configuration files in your home
directory for your new system.