[arch-general] fdisk vs. gdisk for GPT partitioning

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Sebastiaan Lokhorst

16 Dec 2014 16 Dec '14

7:58 p.m.

Hello everyone, Since more than a year now, fdisk (provided by util-linux) has had GPT support. This theoretically makes gdisk a duplicate of fdisk, and we could replace gdisk with fdisk. Now, I'm not asking to drop gdisk or anything like that, but in an effort to clean up the Beginners' guide of the Arch Wiki, we want to use a single partitioning tool for both MBR and GPT partitioning instructions.[1] util-linux fdisk is able to provide this functionality, but we are not completely sure if it is stable by now (it should be, I think). So, now my question: is there anyone who has had bad experiences with fdisk and GPT partitions, where gdisk was superior? Or any other objections why we should keep gdisk instructions in the Beginners' guide? Thanks! Sebastiaan [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Talk:Beginners%27_guide#remove_gdisk_in...

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Bardur Arantsson

16 Dec 16 Dec

8:15 p.m.

On 2014-12-16 19:58, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:

...

Hello everyone,

Since more than a year now, fdisk (provided by util-linux) has had GPT support. This theoretically makes gdisk a duplicate of fdisk, and we could replace gdisk with fdisk.

Now, I'm not asking to drop gdisk or anything like that, but in an effort to clean up the Beginners' guide of the Arch Wiki, we want to use a single partitioning tool for both MBR and GPT partitioning instructions.[1] util-linux fdisk is able to provide this functionality, but we are not completely sure if it is stable by now (it should be, I think).

Speaking from complete ignorance... do significant numbers of people still use MBR for non-obsolete platforms/machines? Regards,

Jakub Klinkovský

8:23 p.m.

On 16.12.14 at 20:15, Bardur Arantsson wrote:

...

On 2014-12-16 19:58, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:

...
Hello everyone,

Since more than a year now, fdisk (provided by util-linux) has had GPT support. This theoretically makes gdisk a duplicate of fdisk, and we could replace gdisk with fdisk.

Now, I'm not asking to drop gdisk or anything like that, but in an effort to clean up the Beginners' guide of the Arch Wiki, we want to use a single partitioning tool for both MBR and GPT partitioning instructions.[1] util-linux fdisk is able to provide this functionality, but we are not completely sure if it is stable by now (it should be, I think).

Speaking from complete ignorance... do significant numbers of people still use MBR for non-obsolete platforms/machines?

The Beginners' guide still applies to people with "obsolete" hardware... -- jlk

Patrick Burroughs (Celti)

8:40 p.m.

On 2014-12-16 19:58, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:

...

So, now my question: is there anyone who has had bad experiences with fdisk and GPT partitions, where gdisk was superior? Or any other objections why we should keep gdisk instructions in the Beginners' guide?

The only shortcoming I've run across is fdisk is less capable than gdisk with hybrid MBRs and can't do GPT->MBR conversion at all. The former is not something a Beginner's Guide user should be touching, in my opinion; the latter may be useful for those who accidentally create GPT disks when they need an MBR instead. On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Jakub Klinkovský wrote:

...

On 16.12.14 at 20:15, Bardur Arantsson wrote:

...
Speaking from complete ignorance... do significant numbers of people still use MBR for non-obsolete platforms/machines?

The Beginners' guide still applies to people with "obsolete" hardware...

I had to use MBR on a relatively recent machine because the supposedly-UEFI firmware refused to even recognise GPT disks, let alone boot from them. It's still relevant. ~Celti

David J. Haines

8:52 p.m.

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 12:40:48PM -0700, Patrick Burroughs (Celti) wrote:

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The only shortcoming I've run across is fdisk is less capable than gdisk with hybrid MBRs and can't do GPT->MBR conversion at all. The former is not something a Beginner's Guide user should be touching, in my opinion; the latter may be useful for those who accidentally create GPT disks when they need an MBR instead.

gdisk is also capable of placing new partitions at the end of a block of empty space without having to do manual calcuation of the start sector. I personally find this behavior invaluable. -- David J. Haines djhaines@gmx.com 0xAFB3D16D - F929 270F B7C3 78AE A741 434F A7C6 F264 AFB3 D16C

Neven Sajko

17 Dec 17 Dec

2:30 a.m.

On 16 December 2014 at 20:52, David J. Haines wrote:

...

gdisk is also capable of placing new partitions at the end of a block of empty space without having to do manual calcuation of the start sector. I personally find this behavior invaluable. I'm curious why do you allocate partitions to the end of the disk. Do you want to be able to resize them more easily, or something else?

David J. Haines

4:04 p.m.

On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 02:30:43AM +0100, Neven Sajko wrote:

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On 16 December 2014 at 20:52, David J. Haines wrote:

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gdisk is also capable of placing new partitions at the end of a block of empty space without having to do manual calcuation of the start sector. I personally find this behavior invaluable. I'm curious why do you allocate partitions to the end of the disk. Do you want to be able to resize them more easily, or something else?

For rotational media, you generally want to put your more-used data on the outside of the platters (the "beginning" of the disk from partitioning tools' perspective) because the data density of the platters is constant throughout, meaning that more data will pass under the heads in a given unit of time when they're at the outside of the platter, as opposed to the inside. Thus, you generally want to put things like /, /var, and /home on the outside (the beginning) and things like swap on the inside (the end), unless swapping happens to be what you want your system to really excel at. -- David J. Haines djhaines@gmx.com 0xAFB3D16D - F929 270F B7C3 78AE A741 434F A7C6 F264 AFB3 D16C

Christian Demsar

4:34 p.m.

On December 17, 2014 10:04:43 AM EST, "David J. Haines" wrote:

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On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 02:30:43AM +0100, Neven Sajko wrote:

...
On 16 December 2014 at 20:52, David J. Haines wrote:

...
gdisk is also capable of placing new partitions at the end of a block of empty space without having to do manual calcuation of the start sector. I personally find this behavior invaluable. I'm curious why do you allocate partitions to the end of the disk. Do you want to be able to resize them more easily, or something else?

For rotational media, you generally want to put your more-used data on the outside of the platters (the "beginning" of the disk from partitioning tools' perspective) because the data density of the platters is constant throughout, meaning that more data will pass under the heads in a given unit of time when they're at the outside of the platter, as opposed to the inside.

Thus, you generally want to put things like /, /var, and /home on the outside (the beginning) and things like swap on the inside (the end), unless swapping happens to be what you want your system to really excel at.

I've always been under the impression that hard drives start at the outer edge and work inward as they fill up, as opposed to optical disks. It makes the most logical sense, given the performance characteristics. -- vixsomnis

Ido Rosen

4:37 p.m.

On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 10:04 AM, David J. Haines wrote:

...

On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 02:30:43AM +0100, Neven Sajko wrote:

...
On 16 December 2014 at 20:52, David J. Haines wrote:

...
gdisk is also capable of placing new partitions at the end of a block of empty space without having to do manual calcuation of the start sector. I personally find this behavior invaluable. I'm curious why do you allocate partitions to the end of the disk. Do you want to be able to resize them more easily, or something else?

For rotational media, you generally want to put your more-used data on the outside of the platters (the "beginning" of the disk from partitioning tools' perspective) because the data density of the platters is constant throughout, meaning that more data will pass under the heads in a given unit of time when they're at the outside of the platter, as opposed to the inside.

Thus, you generally want to put things like /, /var, and /home on the outside (the beginning) and things like swap on the inside (the end), unless swapping happens to be what you want your system to really excel at.

I don't know if this is logic is still true with modern rotational disks (SMR/PMR/PCMR), or if it is as simple as beginning and end of block device translating to outer and inner platter sections -- I think there is some level of indirection. It does not diminish your argument for using gdisk, though.

...

-- David J. Haines djhaines@gmx.com 0xAFB3D16D - F929 270F B7C3 78AE A741 434F A7C6 F264 AFB3 D16C

Bardur Arantsson

16 Dec 16 Dec

9:21 p.m.

On 2014-12-16 20:40, Patrick Burroughs (Celti) wrote:

...

I had to use MBR on a relatively recent machine because the supposedly-UEFI firmware refused to even recognise GPT disks, let alone boot from them. It's still relevant.

Interesting. Care to name-and-shame said firmware? (I don't necessarily think it influences the decision, even so. Surely the Beginner's Guide should be optimized for the common case rather than edge cases, as yours probably was?) Regards,

Patrick Burroughs (Celti)

9:28 p.m.

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 1:21 PM, Bardur Arantsson wrote:

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On 2014-12-16 20:40, Patrick Burroughs (Celti) wrote:

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I had to use MBR on a relatively recent machine because the supposedly-UEFI firmware refused to even recognise GPT disks, let alone boot from them. It's still relevant.

Interesting. Care to name-and-shame said firmware?

(I don't necessarily think it influences the decision, even so. Surely the Beginner's Guide should be optimized for the common case rather than edge cases, as yours probably was?)

It was a bottom-of-the-line Hewlett-Packard mini-tower — one of the very last models that still shipped with Windows 7 as an option. Given how many people are still using Windows 7 and might want to upgrade to Linux rather than (shudder) Windows 8, I don't think that's an uncommon case at all. ~Celti

Bardur Arantsson

8:44 p.m.

On 2014-12-16 20:23, Jakub Klinkovský wrote:

...

On 16.12.14 at 20:15, Bardur Arantsson wrote:

...
On 2014-12-16 19:58, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:

...
Hello everyone,

Since more than a year now, fdisk (provided by util-linux) has had GPT support. This theoretically makes gdisk a duplicate of fdisk, and we could replace gdisk with fdisk.

Now, I'm not asking to drop gdisk or anything like that, but in an effort to clean up the Beginners' guide of the Arch Wiki, we want to use a single partitioning tool for both MBR and GPT partitioning instructions.[1] util-linux fdisk is able to provide this functionality, but we are not completely sure if it is stable by now (it should be, I think).

Speaking from complete ignorance... do significant numbers of people still use MBR for non-obsolete platforms/machines?

The Beginners' guide still applies to people with "obsolete" hardware...

Oh, sure, but maybe such complications should be pushed to a subpage? I'm not sure why you put "obsolete" in quotation marks...? I have a machine from ~5 years ago that has no problem with GPT. I certainly understand that we should strive to support old hardware and such *as long as it makes sense effort-wise*, but perhaps the Beginner's Guide is not the place to do that? (Beginners are perhaps likely to have reasonably up-to-date hardware, etc. etc.) (I don't feel strongly about it, so whatever. Just offering it as a PoV.) Regards,

Eli Schwartz

11:43 p.m.

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 1:15 PM, Bardur Arantsson wrote:

...

Speaking from complete ignorance... do significant numbers of people still use MBR for non-obsolete platforms/machines?

Regards,

My laptop is the ~10 years old Dell Inspiron B130. On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 1:44 PM, Bardur Arantsson wrote:

...

I'm not sure why you put "obsolete" in quotation marks...? I have a machine from ~5 years ago that has no problem with GPT. I certainly understand that we should strive to support old hardware and such *as long as it makes sense effort-wise*, but perhaps the Beginner's Guide is not the place to do that? (Beginners are perhaps likely to have reasonably up-to-date hardware, etc. etc.)

Regards,

Where is your data for that assumption? :p My first foray into ArchLinux was installing it to said laptop ^^ so I at least was a beginner with fairly obsolete hardware. In any event, I decided to keep the Windows (XP) partition -- no point in tossing a working OS, and I need it for a program or two that runs on XP but not WINE. So I *had* to use MBR, as XP does not support GPT. And most likely, so will anyone who wishes to dual-boot a computer with Win7 preinstalled (which usually defaults to BIOS+MBR I believe), unless you want to have a lot of fun switching it manually to UEFI+GPT, or reinstalling. MBR -- Eli Schwartz

Jeremy Audet

17 Dec 17 Dec

12:34 a.m.

...

Speaking from complete ignorance... do significant numbers of people still use MBR for non-obsolete platforms/machines?

Until this spring, I used a ~7 year old Dell Precision M4300 laptop. I only got rid of it because I work from home these days and have no need for a laptop at all, and I knew someone else who considered the machine an upgrade. I also dual-boot with Windows 7 on my desktop. The Windows 7 install disk I use does not support GPT partitions. I'm going to be re-installing Arch and Windows 7 on this very desktop later this week due to some hardware upgrades (No more Athlon II x2 270 for me!), which means that support for MBR is a requirement. So yes, MBR is very much still a thing. —Jeremy 'Ichimonji10' Audet

Stefan Höck

5:43 a.m.

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Until this spring, I used a ~7 year old Dell Precision M4300 laptop.

Same here. I installed Arch for the very first time this summer on old hardware to make sure that I did not ruin my running Linux installations. Trying it in VirtualBox would probably have been a better option, but this seemed overly complicated at that time and I had this old laptop lying around. However, I think we still should consider having only UEFI in the beginners guide and link to a separate wiki entry if somebody needs an MBR partition. The reasoning is this: When I first installed Arch, I found the whole paragraph about partitioning the hard drive to be the most confusing one as it mentioned several partitioning tools and -schemes. This part of the beginner's guide has been rewritten since then and I find it to be much clearer now. Still, for the very noob I was half a year ago, it would probably have been easier to have UEFI as the default in the beginner's guide and MBR in a separate wiki.

Leonid Isaev

21 Dec 21 Dec

8:54 p.m.

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 08:15:26PM +0100, Bardur Arantsson wrote:

...

On 2014-12-16 19:58, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:

...
Hello everyone,

Since more than a year now, fdisk (provided by util-linux) has had GPT support. This theoretically makes gdisk a duplicate of fdisk, and we could replace gdisk with fdisk.

Now, I'm not asking to drop gdisk or anything like that, but in an effort to clean up the Beginners' guide of the Arch Wiki, we want to use a single partitioning tool for both MBR and GPT partitioning instructions.[1] util-linux fdisk is able to provide this functionality, but we are not completely sure if it is stable by now (it should be, I think).

Speaking from complete ignorance... do significant numbers of people still use MBR for non-obsolete platforms/machines?

Yes. The age of a machine has no relevance for deciding whether to use GPT (or UEFI in general). Whenever I use LVM and/or LUKS, I set it up over the block device (like /dev/sda), not partitions (like /dev/sda1). So, there is no partition table at all. In this case, using legacy BIOS saves me from lots of UEFI-related headache. And of course, this entire motto of GPT "we support 20TiB drives" is just silly... Cheers, -- Leonid Isaev GPG fingerprints: DA92 034D B4A8 EC51 7EA6 20DF 9291 EE8A 043C B8C4 C0DF 20D0 C075 C3F1 E1BE 775A A7AE F6CB 164B 5A6D

Sebastiaan Lokhorst

9:49 p.m.

Thanks everyone for your responses! It seems that gdisk is still favorable for advanced tasks, but fdisk is can be used for basic tasks, as are usually required by beginners. 2014-12-17 5:43 GMT+01:00 Stefan Höck :

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However, I think we still should consider having only UEFI in the beginners guide and link to a separate wiki entry if somebody needs an MBR partition.

I really like this idea but I think it is not quite the time yet. We're trying to simplify everything else though, so I hope that the Beginners' guide will be clearer anyway. 2014-12-21 20:54 GMT+01:00 Leonid Isaev :

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Yes. The age of a machine has no relevance for deciding whether to use GPT (or UEFI in general).

This is not true. Some low-end modern machines completely drop legacy BIOS boot. So booting via UEFI is required, and thus GPT is required. Thanks, Sebastiaan

Leonid Isaev

10:48 p.m.

On Sun, Dec 21, 2014 at 09:49:42PM +0100, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:

...

Thanks everyone for your responses! It seems that gdisk is still favorable for advanced tasks, but fdisk is can be used for basic tasks, as are usually required by beginners.

No, that was my point: for "advanced" tasks you need neither. I never read the beginners' guide, and don't care how it is formatted. I am just trying to un-confuse people regarding the whole GPT vs MBR thing...

...

2014-12-21 20:54 GMT+01:00 Leonid Isaev :

...
Yes. The age of a machine has no relevance for deciding whether to use GPT (or UEFI in general).

This is not true. Some low-end modern machines completely drop legacy BIOS boot. So booting via UEFI is required, and thus GPT is required.

I really doubt this. Are you saying that some vendors on purpose break such things as booting from an external USB key? For example, I have an ExoPC tablet running Arch 64bit. It is true, that there is no checkbox in UEFI config saying "legacy BIOS". However, GPT partitioning is _not_ required at all. So, I nuked the EFI partition, made the entire SSD a LUKS container, and happily boot with MBR. Cheers, -- Leonid Isaev GPG fingerprints: DA92 034D B4A8 EC51 7EA6 20DF 9291 EE8A 043C B8C4 C0DF 20D0 C075 C3F1 E1BE 775A A7AE F6CB 164B 5A6D

Sebastiaan Lokhorst

22 Dec 22 Dec

12:27 a.m.

2014-12-21 22:48 GMT+01:00 Leonid Isaev :

...

...
This is not true. Some low-end modern machines completely drop legacy BIOS boot. So booting via UEFI is required, and thus GPT is required.

I really doubt this. Are you saying that some vendors on purpose break such things as booting from an external USB key?

USB keys can also boot in UEFI mode, see for instance the Arch install medium. But only if the creator of the key included an UEFI boot file of course. An example of newer laptops not having legacy BIOS (or at least disabling it): [1]. An explanation that legacy BIOS is optional: [2]. Thanks, Sebastiaan [1] http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-Systems-and-Software/Pavilio... [2] https://embedded.communities.intel.com/servlet/JiveServlet/previewBody/6775-... (see page 8-9)

Thomas Bächler

7:33 a.m.

Am 21.12.2014 um 22:48 schrieb Leonid Isaev:

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On Sun, Dec 21, 2014 at 09:49:42PM +0100, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:

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Thanks everyone for your responses! It seems that gdisk is still favorable for advanced tasks, but fdisk is can be used for basic tasks, as are usually required by beginners.

No, that was my point: for "advanced" tasks you need neither. I never read the beginners' guide, and don't care how it is formatted. I am just trying to un-confuse people regarding the whole GPT vs MBR thing...

If you want to un-confuse people, you can really simplify the instructions by using only fdisk in the beginner's guide. Then you have the same tool for both GPT and MBR.

...

...
This is not true. Some low-end modern machines completely drop legacy BIOS boot. So booting via UEFI is required, and thus GPT is required.

I really doubt this. Are you saying that some vendors on purpose break such things as booting from an external USB key?

I have a firmware that boots from USB fine in UEFI mode, but _only_ if it is formatted with MBR - it won't boot from GPT USB disks. Confusing, right?

Leonid Isaev

4:30 p.m.

On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 07:33:43AM +0100, Thomas Bächler wrote:

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Am 21.12.2014 um 22:48 schrieb Leonid Isaev:

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On Sun, Dec 21, 2014 at 09:49:42PM +0100, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:

...
Thanks everyone for your responses! It seems that gdisk is still favorable for advanced tasks, but fdisk is can be used for basic tasks, as are usually required by beginners.

No, that was my point: for "advanced" tasks you need neither. I never read the beginners' guide, and don't care how it is formatted. I am just trying to un-confuse people regarding the whole GPT vs MBR thing...

If you want to un-confuse people, you can really simplify the instructions by using only fdisk in the beginner's guide. Then you have the same tool for both GPT and MBR.

I usually go with cfdisk(8) though. But in general, I'd recommend to use BIOS/MBR whenever possible...

...

...
...
This is not true. Some low-end modern machines completely drop legacy BIOS boot. So booting via UEFI is required, and thus GPT is required.

I really doubt this. Are you saying that some vendors on purpose break such things as booting from an external USB key?

I have a firmware that boots from USB fine in UEFI mode, but _only_ if it is formatted with MBR - it won't boot from GPT USB disks. Confusing, right?

Not really. I can tell that Win 7/8/8.1 installation DVD downloaded from MSDN are definitely not GPT-formatted. But, that's what happens on my tablet. Formally the firmware is UEFI, but I only use MBR partitioning. Cheers, -- Leonid Isaev GPG fingerprints: DA92 034D B4A8 EC51 7EA6 20DF 9291 EE8A 043C B8C4 C0DF 20D0 C075 C3F1 E1BE 775A A7AE F6CB 164B 5A6D

Jude DaShiell

11 Feb 11 Feb

7:13 p.m.

Yes, I couldn't create an ef02 partition using fdisk. I ended up using gdisk and the job got done with no problem at all. On Tue, 16 Dec 2014, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:

...

Hello everyone,

Since more than a year now, fdisk (provided by util-linux) has had GPT support. This theoretically makes gdisk a duplicate of fdisk, and we could replace gdisk with fdisk.

Now, I'm not asking to drop gdisk or anything like that, but in an effort to clean up the Beginners' guide of the Arch Wiki, we want to use a single partitioning tool for both MBR and GPT partitioning instructions.[1] util-linux fdisk is able to provide this functionality, but we are not completely sure if it is stable by now (it should be, I think).

So, now my question: is there anyone who has had bad experiences with fdisk and GPT partitions, where gdisk was superior? Or any other objections why we should keep gdisk instructions in the Beginners' guide?

Thanks! Sebastiaan

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Talk:Beginners%27_guide#remove_gdisk_in...

jude Twitter: @JudeDaShiell

Sebastiaan Lokhorst

7:19 p.m.

2015-02-11 19:13 GMT+01:00 Jude DaShiell :

...

Yes, I couldn't create an ef02 partition using fdisk. I ended up using gdisk and the job got done with no problem at all.

You can create a BIOS boot partition ("ef02" in gdisk) in fdisk: Press "p" to change partition type, press "L" to list partition types, and look for "BIOS boot partition": "4 BIOS boot ..." type "4" done! Or did you mean something else?

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14 participants

participants (14)

Bardur Arantsson
Christian Demsar
David J. Haines
Eli Schwartz
Ido Rosen
Jakub Klinkovský
Jeremy Audet
Jude DaShiell
Leonid Isaev
Neven Sajko
Patrick Burroughs (Celti)
Sebastiaan Lokhorst
Stefan Höck
Thomas Bächler