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> On Dec 2, 2025, at 5:26 AM, Steve Litt <slitt@???> wrote:
>
> Peter via Dng said on 01 Dec 2025 15:13:56 -0700
>
>> [snip]
>> So the ultra-slim configuration for a BIOS machine is one part,
>> possibly with a swap file. For UEFI: protective MBR, FAT formatted
>> EFI and a part with /root, /home, etc.
>
> But you have only 32GB of "disk" anyway, so a swap file would be silly:
> You just need to watch what you run like a hawk. And I don't understand
> how you get an EFI partition anyway, since they're supposed to be
> pretty big, IIRC.

The recommendation for EFI partition size is 300MB. I make mine 2G. It is formatted in FAT32 (VFAT). it is its own partition type.

I’ve found that when installing Devuan and manually partitioning the drive, I’ve had to set the partition as a normal partition, format it, then restart the install and change the partition type to EFI and then the installation will continue on its merry way. I’ve been known to partition the drive manually first, then rin thebinstaller and set the mount points when thay step come up It’s a little cumbersome. The installer doesn’t know how to do ot manually only in guided using the entire disk and uefi which will leave you with ext4 and LVM. On virtual machines I set up a pristine vm and use that to spin up new machines as needed.

I’m currently experimenting with NAS software, none of which I like nearly as much as the old clearos which is no longer supported. That’s a different discussion. I digress.

My preference has always been to have /boot as it’s own ext4 partition type the rest of the disk is BTRFS aart from swap. I then make an immediate snapshot and edit grub to boot into that snapshot. I’m then able to make snapshots of the entire drive. I make btrfs subvolumes of /home /etc and /var/lib. It use btrbk (which creates a proper backup chain) to back all that up to separate machines on (as Steve puts it) spinning rust.

I’v had enough trouble with btrfs in the past to not trust it when recovering from a power failure. My VM host has everything on xfs.

Cheers,
Curtis