Bug 577870

Summary:	Preparing the disks: BIOS Boot partition should not apply to UEFI
Product:	[OLD] Docs on www.gentoo.org	Reporter:	Dainius Masiliūnas <pastas4>
Component:	Installation Handbook	Assignee:	Docs Team <docs-team>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID
Severity:	normal
Priority:	Normal
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
URL:	https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Installation/Disks
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Dainius Masiliūnas 2016-03-20 20:13:30 UTC

Right now, the handbook states this:

"For completeness, the BIOS boot partition is needed when GPT partition layout is used with GRUB2, or when the MBR partition layout is used with GRUB2 when the first partition starts earlier than the 1 MB location on the disk."

In addition, throughout the handbook, the BIOS Boot partition is mentioned and created. However, BIOS Boot partitions do not make sense in the context of UEFI (which is the majority of today's systems and thus the primary target of the handbook), so that line is factually inaccurate.

At minimum, the "What is the BIOS boot partition?" section should have a note saying that it only applies to BIOS systems. Ideally, the BIOS boot partition should also not be a part of the default partitioning layout.

In addition, the /boot partition is currently described as:

/dev/sda2 	ext2 (or vfat) 	128M 	Boot partition

Nowadays the FS type should be swapped, to:

/dev/sda2 	vfat (or ext2) 	128M 	(EFI) Boot partition

The amount of space allocated for it would be best increased (to at least 512 MiB), too, since EFI SYSTEM partitions store kernels for all the installed OSs.

Comment 1 nm (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2016-03-21 09:25:19 UTC

please use the "discussion" tab for suggestions on the handbook wiki page itself.

Comment 2 Dainius Masiliūnas 2016-03-21 11:52:21 UTC

I asked on the IRC channel and was told to submit change requests to the handbook here, *not* to the discussion tab of the wiki.

If it is in fact policy to submit change requests to the discussion tab of the wiki now, then please remove "Installation Handbook" or indeed the whole "Documentation" product from the bug tracker.