esp uefi partition size?

[c_xy]

Hello,

We are setting up the partition for our r730 dell server. We are installing Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS server. This is a single operating system installation. Only Ubuntu 16.04.1 server LTS. No dual boot involved.

Storage capacity is Hardware RAID6 with 32 TB available (2 8 TB drives as spares).

We are more familiar with BIOS but are now trying to install using UEFI mode.

In configuring the partitions, a separate ESP boot partition is required now. The other configured partitions will be ext4

However, we are unsure of what size to allocate to the partition given are planned setup. Looking online, we've seen recommendations from 150 MB minimum to 250 MB recommended.

What is the rule of thumb for the amount of space used for the ESP?

Thank you.

c.

[Dennis N]

However, we are unsure of what size to allocate to the partition given are planned setup. Looking online, we've seen recommendations from 150 MB minimum to 250 MB recommended.

What is the rule of thumb for the amount of space used for the ESP?

For Ubuntu family of distros, very little space is needed on the EFI system partition. In the details below for this machine, only 3.5 MB is used for the boot files in the ESP. The size for the partition was (probably) set at 520 MB during install, and that proved to be more than enough.


dmn@Sydney:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 383M 6.4M 377M 2% /run
/dev/sda5 27G 11G 16G 41% /
tmpfs 1.9G 164K 1.9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1 511M 3.5M 508M 1% /boot/efi
/dev/sda4 120G 49G 65G 43% /mnt/Common-Files
tmpfs 383M 4.0K 383M 1% /run/user/108
tmpfs 383M 40K 383M 1% /run/user/1000


On newer installations, I allow 80 MB so it can be used by other Linux distros as well in the future - the ESP depicted above currently contains files for only one OS. Use 500 MB if you have Windows in play.

[oldfred]

Part of reason for larger ESP is that is it difficult to resize as it is first partition on drive.
There are some that want the capability in the future to add things into ESP.
If not a server like yours, you might want rEFInd for a nice gui to dual boot.
And some very advanced configurations, can use UEFI to boot a kernel in ESP. I have not seen that other than some discussion that it is possible.

So I typically suggest 300MB which on new TB sized drives is not large. But as Dennis N points out the use of the ESP - efi system partition is normally very small.

The author of gdisk suggests 550MB.
http://www.rodsbooks.com/linux-uefi/

[c_xy]

Thank you both for your replies. Both of your responses helped a great deal.

Thanks again.

c