Efi Partition System format box leave it blank or checkmark it?

General Linux Question
1

Feeling very confused about this one .In a Linux only installation in UEFI mode,for Efi partition,do I need to tick(checkmark) the format box or just leave it blank.

I had seen You tube videos & linux mint blogs where the efi Partition format box was just left blank & yet after running command" sudo cat/etc/fstab, it show mount point is /boot/efi & type is :VFAT
VFAT I believe is just Linux/Ubuntu way of detecting the presence of FAT32 file system
OR
do I need to format the efi partion with FAT 32 file system using GParted in Linux Mint live session first?

2

@gob
While in the live session you can use gparted to create your linux partitions.
With uefi or gpt disk you will need a Fat 32, about 300MB, for the efi partition mounted at /boot/efi, a swap partition, a root partition, about 20 to 25GB, mounted at /, and a
home partition mounted at /home, if desired. Make the efi partition first and the swap
partition second, the root or / partition can use the rest of the disk or be used as / or /home.
Gparted can create the partitions, mount points will be added during the install, I always use the “something else” so I can manually assign my mount points.

3

It depends on whether you have previously partitioned the disk ie with gparted as described by @4dandl4 ,
or whether you are about to partition and format it from inside the install script.

I would recommend doing partitioning and formatting first, the way @4dandl4 says
except I would add…
in gparted first set the partition table type to gpt
before you make any partitions

Regards
Neville

1 Like
4

@nevj
I was assuming @gob knew about setting the disk to either gpt or mbr. Thanks for the update!!!

5

@4dandl4 @nevj thanks.Found this tutorial at You tube which I can use as a guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt5z68BEY7M

6

Tutorials are a great way to get going., but remember, you need to increase your understanding of what is going on so that in future you might be less dependent on following recipes. Do some reading, it helps. We all use recipes, but knowing what to do is the key.
Regards
Neville

7

@gob
Your tutorial is only describing what you have been instructed. Boot a live Linux Mint or any other
distro and use gparted to create your partitions, you can then use the Mint install to create your
partition mount points, or just let Mint use the entire disk, and it will do the work for you.
If you ever install Gentoo, you will learn how to do a Linux install, manually.

1 Like