In bug #1076582 it was pointed out that the documentation at
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/apcs05.en.html

has the following line:
"create a small (25–50MB should suffice) partition at the beginning
of the disk to be used as the boot partition"

Earlier in that bug and also in #1076539 (which likely is the same
issue) I made the argument that 512MB (the current d-i default) for the
``/boot`` partition is already problematic.

https://bugs.debian.org/960181#15 contains the following line:

Plymouth is installed by default and that includes the GPU modules and
the firmware for it. And the firmware files have been getting bigger
too, especially for nvidia where they just added firmware files which
are respectively 23MB and 38MB in size ... (sigh)

So the recommendation of a 25-50MB ``/boot`` partition is BAD.
REALLY BAD as "we don't have a general way to grow the partition
on installed systems."

But then I read a bit further on the above referenced page and found the
following:

- - "If you have a large IDE disk"
- - "This restriction doesn't apply if you have a BIOS newer than around 1995–98"
- - Seeing the word "cylinder" all over the place ...
- - "CHS translation mode (“Large”)" = Cylinder/Head/Sector I presume?

At that point I fell off my chair :-O

Or as I phrased it in https://bugs.debian.org/1076582#27 :
"Maybe that document should be updated for this CENTURY?"

I actually think this bug should be RC, but couldn't (quickly) find
which (if any) Policy rules it violated.
And 'critical' is possibly a bit much?

But I think these recommendations ought to be updated before Trixie is
released and possibly current Stable docs updated in case someone
follows the Installation Guide recommendation (which is normally and
otherwise a good thing).

For ``/boot`` size it should minimally follow d-i's default, but I
actually think both should be updated to 1G in size, which should
(generally) not be a problem with current TBs NVMe drives.

Cheers,
  Diederik

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 6.9.9-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
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(I replied to the list instead of the bug report, sorry for the duplicate)

It is mostly the initramfs which is getting too big.

Plymouth is installed by default (recommended) by desktop environment
meta-packages. It adds GPU-related kernel modules and firmware files to
the initramfs.

The initramfs built by initramfs-tools < 0.143 can be as big as 240 MB
when firmware-nvidia-graphics is installed.

D-i partman does not really define a default size for /boot. Guided
partitioning with LVM currently sets a fixed size of 512 MB regardless
of the disk size. Guided partitioning without LVM does not create a
/boot partition. Manual partitioning does not have default size.

Or changed to a variable size depending on the disk size.

Maybe it should also be noted that if systemd-boot is installed, the EFI
system partition (ESP) or the extended boot loader partition (XBOOTLDR)
must be big enough to contain the kernel images and initramfs.

Hi,

Am 19. Juli 2024 20:54:24 MESZ schrieb Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org>:

This bug seems firstly a documentation issue, but one could also argue,
that there's another topic with the /boot partition being to small these days
in the light of bigger initrds due to firmware includes etc.

So, before changing the doc, we should first evaluate, if the default size
should be increased.

Thoughts?


Holger

Hi,

Am 19. Juli 2024 20:54:24 MESZ schrieb Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org>:

This bug seems firstly a documentation issue, but one could also argue,
that there's another topic with the /boot partition being to small these days
in the light of bigger initrds due to firmware includes etc.

So, before changing the doc, we should first evaluate, if the default size
should be increased.

Thoughts?


Holger

Agreed.

For my thoughts, I'll just quote what I said in the submission:

Hi,

Am 20. Juli 2024 19:10:20 MESZ schrieb Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org>:


I have created a merge request on salsa, as a proposal:

<https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/partman-auto/-/merge_requests/13>

Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org> wrote (Sat, 20 Jul 2024 19:10:20 +0200):

Apparently we have a consensus for some change of the default size for /boot
(see https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/partman-auto/-/merge_requests/13),
so I clone this bug and reassign to partman-auto.

Hi,

I have prepared a patch, to update the installation-guide (attached),
mostly a removal of outdated / no longer needed information.


Holger

Hi,
<didi.debian@cknow.org>:

Much better!

It may be possible to improve/extend the information further, but that could
happen another time (too).
The real problematic parts are gone now, so thanks for that :-)

Cheers,
  Diederik

Hi,

Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org> wrote (Tue, 23 Jul 2024 22:14:46 +0200):

Just pushed to git.


Holger

Thanks!

Version: 20250418

With the release of version 20250418, this bug is resolved. Thanks!

Cheers,
  Diederik