HDD

Apart from the last step, setting up /etc/fstab there are no differences between partitioning a HDD or SSD drive. All modern Linux partitioning tools take care of aligning the partitions automatically.

Relevant Partition IDs

Partition ID	Description
EF02	BIOS boot partition
EF00	EFI System Partition
FD00	Linux RAID
8200	Linux swap (auto-mounted by systemd)
8300	Linux filesystem
8302	Linux /home (auto-mounted by systemd)
8303	Linux x86 root (/) (auto-mounted by systemd)
8304	Linux x86-64 root (/) (auto-mounted by systemd)
8305	Linux ARM64 root (/) (auto-mounted by systemd)
8306	Linux /srv (auto-mounted by systemd)

Create a simple Linux GPT partition layout (UEFI with or without secure boot)

Code: GPT partition layout for UEFI

/dev/sda1 200 MiB /boot/efi EF00 vfat EFI System Partition /dev/sda2 500 MiB /boot 8300 ext4 Linux filesystem /dev/sda3 512 MiB 8200 swap Linux swap /dev/sda4 25 GiB / 8304 ext4 Linux x86-64 root (/)

# gdisk /dev/sda

Code: gdisk commands

Command (? for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 156301488 sectors, 74.5 GiB [...] n 1 enter +200M EF00 c 1 EFI System Partition n 2 enter +500M 8300 n 3 enter +512M 8200 n 4 enter enter 8304 p w Y

Create a simple Linux GPT partition layout (Legacy BIOS)

Code: GPT partition layout for legacy BIOS

/dev/sda1 1 MiB EF02 BIOS boot BIOS boot partition /dev/sda2 100 MiB /boot 8300 ext4 Linux filesystem /dev/sda3 512 MiB 8200 swap Linux swap /dev/sda4 25 GiB / 8304 ext4 Linux x86-64 root (/)

# gdisk /dev/sda

Code: gdisk commands

Command (? for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 156301488 sectors, 74.5 GiB [...] n 1 enter +1M EF02 n 2 enter +100M 8300 n 3 enter +512M 8200 n 4 enter enter 8304 p w Y

Create the filesystems

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

# mkswap /dev/sda3

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4

Additional for UEFI:

# mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1

Label the filesystems

# tune2fs -L boot /dev/sda2

# mkswap -L swap /dev/sda3

# tune2fs -L root /dev/sda4

Additional for UEFI:

# fatlabel /dev/sda1 efi

And verify with:

# blkid

Mount the filesystems

# mkdir -p /mnt/exherbo

# swapon /dev/sda3

# mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/exherbo

# mkdir /mnt/exherbo/boot

# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/exherbo/boot

Additional for UEFI:

# mkdir /mnt/exherbo/boot/efi

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/exherbo/boot/efi

Optional: For installation or rescue purposes you might also need to mount the following.

# mount -o rbind /dev /mnt/exherbo/dev/

# mount -o bind /sys /mnt/exherbo/sys/

# mount -t proc none /mnt/exherbo/proc/

Configure /etc/fstab

List the UUIDs with:

# blkid

For HDDs

File: /etc/fstab

UUID=cf602240-7bac-4b29-8930-2080a5aac7cd       /            ext4    defaults                      0 1
UUID=0930a69b-f2d5-4607-93fe-4f8bfdf2ea87       /boot        ext4    defaults                      0 2
UUID=8E3D-60F5                                  /boot/efi    vfat    umask=0077,shortname=winnt    0 0
UUID=8431f5f2-0cb1-4831-aed2-00d618543e0a       swap         swap    defaults                      0 0

For SSDs

• You could go for relatime as a compromise instead, but there are currently no known issues (exception is mutt) when using noatime
• discard enables the TRIM function which should be available on all modern SSDs, check with
  # hdparm -I /dev/sda
• mdraid, dm-crypt and the loopback block driver support passing discard commands to the underlying layer(s) since kernel 3.7

File: /etc/fstab

UUID=cf602240-7bac-4b29-8930-2080a5aac7cd       /            ext4    defaults,noatime,discard           0 1
UUID=0930a69b-f2d5-4607-93fe-4f8bfdf2ea87       /boot        ext4    defaults,noatime,discard,noauto    0 2
UUID=8E3D-60F5                                  /boot/efi    vfat    umask=0077,shortname=winnt         0 0
UUID=8431f5f2-0cb1-4831-aed2-00d618543e0a       swap         swap    defaults                           0 0

SSD: Check estimated remaining life time / Wear Leveling Count

To check the current Wear Leveling Count (supported e.g. by Samsung SSDs).

# smartctl -a /dev/sda

Code: smartctl Wear_Leveling_Count Output

177 Wear_Leveling_Count     0x0013   099   099   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       2

The Wear_Leveling_Count starts to count down from 100 to 01, in this example it's 099 since the drive is pretty new.

Then proceed to configure GRUB and your Kernel.