3TB GPT, UFI, and Grub issues when installing Ubuntu/Mint

[SJB]

I spend the whole of last weekend attempting to get the latest Mint installed on my brand new 7200 3TB drive, but try as I may, lots of googling and assuming the gaps I ended up having a "working" system. (Strange enough Pinguy installed correctly, but the system is just too one the edge for me aka unstable)

Set UEFI option in the bios (Thanks MyWorld)

The I have created the following with GParted

Create GPT partition Table


200MB Primary UFS
200MB Primary Fat /Boot Boot flag set
50GB Primary ext4 /
rest Primary ext4 /home

when the installation concludes with Mint, grub fails to install. I then start Pinguy/Rescueremix for for a Boot-repair, only after numerous attempt it worked;

However, when starting up I get a grub error, and just pressing "enter" the pc completes a successful boot!


May I ask if anyone was successful with this to please provide me with their partition configuration with gparted that should be done prior to attempting the installation. In particular,
Types of partitions, file systems, flags, recommended size and sequence.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[MyWorld]

Why do you have a UFS and FAT partition?
What is UFI? Do you mean UEFI?

Traditional method of partitioning:
100-150Mb ext2 /boot
2Gb swap
50Gb ext4 /
rest ext4 /home

More modern version:
50Gb ext4 /
2Gb swap
rest ext4 /home

Also, why not just accept the default installation partitioning?

[SJB]

Thanks MyWorld (Corrected the typo..),

The recommendation for the fat and the UFS came from the googling, and "filling the gaps".

My understanding is:
UEFI requires the UFS to work.?
Grup requires the fat /boot partition to work?


Still, why do I get the errors with Grub, first with the installation and later once installed during the boot process...

[MyWorld]

It seems UEFI is quite a headache in Linux, you need a Grub that has support for it otherwise you will run into boot problems.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...rs#GRUB.282.29

This is for Linux Mint:
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/858

Some more reading:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=107620

I would just disable UEFI.

[SJB]

Thanks. Looks like short version is:
1) disable UEFI
2) Re-instate MBR (MS-DOS) partition table (aka say goodbay to info...)
3) Reinstall

I hope I'll still be able to see 3TB - because that was the real reason for doing this!

Will post outcome by this weekend...

[ponder]

This may or may not help but leave 2MB or so of free space at the beginning of the drive before you start creating any partitions.

[Tinuva]

I think the actually problem with 3TB drives and up, is a) the size and b) they now come in 4kbyte sector sizes instead of 512byte sector sizes.

For performance reasons, you want to partition on the 4kbyte sector boundaries instead of 512bytes, so your partitions should always start on a sector value that can be divided by 8 or 64 ect (under correction).

The size is probably the biggest problem, and it is only a problem if you want to boot off that hard drive, and most notably, that is only a problem with Win XP or older and Vista 32bit as far as I know. The later versions of Linux/BSD ect are mostly fine with these hard drives, as long as you partition them correctly for max performance.

[Paul_S]

I much prefer installing Linux on LVM.
BTW: Grub can even boot off LVM partitions as well so my typical home (and work) setup is:

One LVM partition the size of the entire disk (LVM pv entire partition).
One LVM logical volume for /boot (500MB ext4) - you can create a separate physical partition if you don't trust Grub with LVM.
One LVM logical volume for swap (2 to 4 GB)
One LVM logical volume for root (20 GB ext4)
One LVM logical volume for /home (100GB ext4)

Then as my storage requirements increase, I just increase the size of the logical volume and resize the underlying ext4 file system.
This can be done live and is very quick - you don't even need to reboot.

Need to increase the size of the /boot file system or increase the swap space? No problem - just resize it on the fly.
Need to make a consistent backup of a live system? No problem - just create an LVM snapshot and back it up.
After using LVM I will never ever go back to partition hell.

The only downside is that some distros (Ubuntu) don't include LVM on the desktop installation disk so you need to use an alternative installer or server installation disk.
This above is a bit OT but I can't understand why people still limit themselves with multiple physical partitions.

[Tinuva]

I much prefer installing Linux on LVM.
BTW: Grub can even boot off LVM partitions as well so my typical home (and work) setup is:

One LVM partition the size of the entire disk (LVM pv entire partition).
One LVM logical volume for /boot (500MB ext4) - you can create a separate physical partition if you don't trust Grub with LVM.
One LVM logical volume for swap (2 to 4 GB)
One LVM logical volume for root (20 GB ext4)
One LVM logical volume for /home (100GB ext4)

Then as my storage requirements increase, I just increase the size of the logical volume and resize the underlying ext4 file system.
This can be done live and is very quick - you don't even need to reboot.

Need to increase the size of the /boot file system or increase the swap space? No problem - just resize it on the fly.
Need to make a consistent backup of a live system? No problem - just create an LVM snapshot and back it up.
After using LVM I will never ever go back to partition hell.

The only downside is that some distros (Ubuntu) don't include LVM on the desktop installation disk so you need to use an alternative installer or server installation disk.
This above is a bit OT but I can't understand why people still limit themselves with multiple physical partitions.

Must say, I haven't used LVM at all in the past, but since using ZFS, I am hooked on volume management. ZFS basically does what LVM+MDADM and few other things do, all in one, but at least you can do online disk checks vs having your filesystem offline whilst doing a diskcheck.

So for now, I pretty much stick to Debian kFreebsd on my home servers, where I need a bit better support I will go back to either normal Debian or Ubuntu.

[MyWorld]

I think the actually problem with 3TB drives and up, is a) the size and b) they now come in 4kbyte sector sizes instead of 512byte sector sizes.

For performance reasons, you want to partition on the 4kbyte sector boundaries instead of 512bytes, so your partitions should always start on a sector value that can be divided by 8 or 64 ect (under correction).

The size is probably the biggest problem, and it is only a problem if you want to boot off that hard drive, and most notably, that is only a problem with Win XP or older and Vista 32bit as far as I know. The later versions of Linux/BSD ect are mostly fine with these hard drives, as long as you partition them correctly for max performance.

Size should not be a problem with Linux since there is no maximum limit on Linux. Filesystem maxim however for ext4 is 1 EiB, so can't be that either.

As a side note, fdisk should not be used for drives/partitions larger than 2TB.
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/fdisk-...eater-2tb.html

You do have to properly partition your disk though (the 4kb sector type), so when you fire up Gparted during installation make sure you check the option "Round to Cylinders". This will align the partitions correctly and you should be set.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...-sector-disks/

It seems UEFI and LVM is the way to go according to one of the articles I posted last night, will have to hone my skills on LVM...

[SJB]

OK Tried it and it failed! MS-Dos MBR did not like the size more than 2TB.

However the following worked. Seems like the less you fiddle the better it works!
1) Disable UEFI
2) Re-instate as MBR as GPT
3) I have the first 150GB as EXT4 for System mounted at root
4) Then the rest of the drive as EXT4 for /home

Thus seems like the #1 is the most important to avoid the pains during installation....

[ponder]

3) I have the first 150GB as EXT4 for System mounted at root

A whole 150GB for /? You will never need more than 20GB at most.