On 24/10/2024 at 21:40, Holger Wansing wrote:
Pascal Hambourg <pas...@plouf.fr.eu.org> wrote (Wed, 23 Oct 2024 17:09:22
+0200):
To be honest, I considered using the "BIOS boot" type when I added the
16MB reserved partition to arm64 recipes. It has the additional
advantage of allowing automatic partitioning in free space to reuse an
existing partition of the same type instead of uselessly creating a new
one, for multi-boot. But again I do not know if multi-boot is a common
use case or even possible on arm64.
The decision is up to d-i maintainers.
I see the benefit of using the "BIOS boot" type for this reserved partition,
more easier allowing people to understand, what this partition is used for.
But on the other hand, since we don't know how dual-boot on this arch
is working (or will work at some time in the future), it may be required
to have separate partitions for boot loader for both of those dual-booted
OS'es. Therefore, I would be in favour of not creating a partition scheme,
which easily allows to mix them up by some semi-automatism (like
auto-partitioning, when installing a new Debian).
The "BIOS boot" type identifier can be set with the "biosgrub" method
without the "$reusemethod{ }" specifier, so that an installation with
automatic partitioning in free space will create a reserved partition
regardless of whether one already exists or not. However IIUC, the
purpose of the reserved partition is to prevent any other partition from
using the first 16MiB of the storage device, because this is where the
boot loader is installed and the platform firmware expects it to be. So
another reserved partition in any other place does not make any sense.
IOW /me voting for keeping this partition as it is now (FAT).
It is not FAT, it is unformatted with the default type identifier
("Linux filesystem").
