Deploying Resizable UEFI linux disk

[mm Ekimia]

Hi , first post , thanks a lot for your work on Fog, it’s an amazing tool.

So far we only succeed to use FOG 1.2.0 for our Linux preinstalled laptops ( [SIZE=11px][FONT=Ubuntu][COLOR=#555555]Single Disk - Resizable) [/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE] :

• Legacy boot machines with sda1= Swap and sda2 = / , it sucessfully resize sda2 on any disk size which is great!

But we still fail on UEFi machines ( [SIZE=11px][FONT=Ubuntu][COLOR=#555555]Single Disk - Resizable) [/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE] :

• Sda1 = EFi partition ( FAT)
• sda2 = Root
• sda3 = Swap ( fixed size we’d like)

Fog restore the initial Partition table, but creates only sda1 and sda2, sda3 is not created at all it seems.

So right now, we still have to boot on a live USB , resize sda2 if needed , create the Swap , and update fstab with the correct swap uuid.

Do you think we need maybe to move the swap on sda2 ? or Fog might be unable right now to do this kind of layout ? then what kind of patch would be needed to achieve this ?

[mm Ekimia]

Nobody ?

this is a pretty standard need, isn’t it ?

Cloning an UEFI linux system with a Root partition and a swap partition, how others do then ?

[Tom Elliott]

This is not pretty standard.

I don’t know how you say it is.

The GPT layout should be done okay, but I don’t know. I haven’t had any method of testing.

If you want, you could try the latest Trunk as I did make changes in how partitions get copied and laid out, though I imagine you’re still going to have similar issues. Then again, maybe it’s fixed and I just haven’t had anybody to test and let us know.

[mm Ekimia]

thanks !

I meant standard as most of the machines are UEFI now. but you are right I don’t now if it’s really feasible to restore and grow with this layout.

[Junkhacker]

most machines are UEFI now, but everyone i know (who knows what they’re doing, anyway) runs them in legacy mode.

[mm Ekimia]

[quote=“Junkhacker, post: 39232, member: 21583”]most machines are UEFI now, but everyone i know (who knows what they’re doing, anyway) runs them in legacy mode.[/quote]

Well, We actually know what we are doing as well

The point is that we don’t use Fog to handle a classroom or a bunch of company computers but we use it for Linux preinstalled laptops Business.

This lead us to want to keep using EFI for now but you’re right maybe we’ll finally hit a wall and go back to legacy bu that I’m afraid that legacy mode won’t be supported forever in a few years on new machines .

I didn’t dig the master branch of FOG yet but I guess this might be something like :

• I found a partition of type EFI : don’t resize
• I found a swap partition : don’t resize ( and reuse the UUID as it’s already done now in legacy mode )
• I found a root partition : resize it to the maximum the disk can handle ( as it’s already done now in legacy mode )

So the gap does not seems to hard but I’m not expert in this area.

Will be happy to sumbit a patch if my skills allow it.

[Junkhacker]

i believe that we actually already have this all functional in the SVN trunk (i personally haven’t tested these features), the biggest holdup so far has been booting into the fog kernel over the network with UEFI computers. so far it can’t be done without some manual interaction at the computer, as i understand it.

[mm Ekimia]

Hi I forgot to end this thread.

We solve this problem by going full Legacy bios on all machines. restoring a singledisk multipartition works great (root partition resizing included)

Thanks everybody for this great project.

[ch3i]

@mm-Ekimia said:

Hi I forgot to end this thread.

We solve this problem by going full Legacy bios on all machines. restoring a singledisk multipartition works great (root partition resizing included)

Thanks everybody for this great project.

Hehe, Thank you for the update

[mm Ekimia]

Hello , even if it was 4 years ago I answer my thread because we now use 1.5.0 which works great .

I can now restore a Full EFI Layout ( EFI + Root + Swap) ( However I restore on a BIOS legacy machine as Booting UEFI PXe is still not setup correctly on my side)

But Now When I deploy image to a Twice Bigger disk ( either SATA or PCIE ) I get :

• EFI partition : 512 MB same size
• Root partition ext4 : Twice Bigger ( proportionnaly)
• Swap Partition : Twice Bigger

Then I wonder if I could avoid that the Swap is twice Bigger ? Because when drive will be 4 times bigger , that will be a Big swap.

Thanks

[Tom Elliott]

@mm-ekimia if you know the number of the swap partition, typically 5, add it to the d1.fixed_size_partitions. I believe it does swap as fixed size automatically now too.

[mm Ekimia]

Thanks tom , You mean trunk would fix this ?

You mean Trunk would detect automatically Fixed size the swap partition ?

Even when a SATA captured ( sda3 ) is restored on a PCIE devices ( /dev/nvme1n1p3 )

it was working perfectly when the partition scheme was Legacy but with EFI scheme it seems to behave differently

[mm Ekimia]

Forget my last post

So yes fixed partitions was initialized with :1:3

So it seems that the third partition (swap here) should not be resized proportionnaly as I understood.

[mm Ekimia]

Hi ,

just to say that I deployed the same Image to a new SATA disk and the 3rd partition (Swap) had a fixed size as Expected.

So I guess that was a mistake on my side.

Problem solved !