Let me answer to your explanations.This is wrong. the Microsoft Extensible Firmware Initiative FAT32 File System Specification Version 1.03, December 6, 2000, states:Not sure it's the last version but in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design...AT_file_system I read: So let's leave it at 2TB for 512 bytes per sector which is the most common size

If I remember correctly, for Windows Microsoft advises a minimum (not maximum) size of 500M for the ESP but this relates only to its intended usage.

This is most probably a limitation of the software tools you use.
Two remarks:

• Better let the kernels and initrd where they belong: in the /boot directory. If the OS loader in the ESP can't find them elsewhere than in the ESP (hint: eLILO, I don't know for rEFInd), use another OS loader (hint: GRUB)
• Nothing prevents you to set up several ESP. This is explicitly allowed by the UEFI specification.

Completely unfounded statement.
This may have been true ten or twenty years ago, not anymore, as they are now a challenger (of Google and Facebook, among others). Two facts:

• They are now a member of the Open Invention Network of which Slint is a licensee :-)
• They own GitHub and as such recently came to the rescue of youtube-dl.

PS sort of an irony that Microsoft protects its users against Google

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Unless I'm mistaken, this would only be an issue with lilo and only if /boot is formatted as F2FS. With elilo, the EFI partition is required to be FAT, so even if the rest of the drive is F2FS, that won't be an issue because the initrd and/or kernel will still reside on the EFI partition and they'll contain the driver needed to boot F2FS.

I imagine there probably aren't many people that use F2FS and aren't using UEFI booting...

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These days I get up in the morning, look in the mirror and wonder, "Who is that old fart?"
I don't shave a often as I use to as I can't remember that guy's name.

I had elilo running about three years ago, but can't remember why I went back to lilo.... Vaguely,
I think it had someting to do with not being able to display my favorite boot screen bitmap. This
was also before I switched to f2fs, then grub, and then back to lilo when grub started having problems.
I've burned out on doing fresh installations, but this will give me a "project" to work on for the next day or two.

Well grub works here, including with f2fs for /. As an aside, I don't like the idea that the file system for / be never checked if f2fs, as is the case at time of writing in rc.S for -current. I have modified it in the attached file to allow periodically check it, the periodicity being after 5 boots by default but settable in /etc/f2fs.conf.

Attached Files

rc.S.txt (17.3 KB, 5 views)

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I'm running lilo on a server I recently setup off site, not because it's any better but because I like that all I have to do is type liloconfig and accept the defaults.. forgetting to copy the new kernel in place after a kernel upgrade isn't a big deal on the machine I sit in front of, but if I forget on an off site server I'm now stuck driving over there to fix it because after rebooting there won't be any network connectivity.

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Hello Didier. Sorry for the typo re: MSD vs/ MS. I'm an old diabetic and my eyesight isn't ideal, nor apparently mu fingers I don't understand why you specifically quoted me at first and then use unspecified quotes from all over the place, but no biggie. It really doesn't apply. I attached a screenshot of the problem.

I created ESP with Gdisk. Are you implying that is less than optimum software? I only used GParted as a graphic to show the used and free doesn't add up to assigned. I don't care anymore what Fat32 specs are. It does support what I want for an ESP but it's "special use case" created by Microsoft doesn't. I'd prefer some Linux-based file system probably ext2, 3 , or 4. That BIOS/UEFI is complaint with Fat32 is still largely due to Microsoft, though I imagine IBM was in there back in the day. I doubt IBM was involved in ESP but I really don't care. I simply resent unnecessary limitations that don't need to be there making ESP Fat32 any different from regular Fat32. What is the gain in that?

Incidentally, it is no longer an issue since I tried creating a 500MB ESP with Gdisk and it works as expected and is certainly of sufficient siZe for most needs. I commonly create or allow the creation of multiple ESPs but prefer to condense into one. It just makes editing more efficient and I like rEFInd. I still don't like Grub and probably never will.
Regards.

Hello enorbet,

For your information I attach to this post part of the text of the chapter 13.3 File System Format that describes the file system format of the ESP, extracted from the UEFI Specification Version 2.9 (March 2021).

Other than that, we don't have to agree on everything, so let's go back to this thread's topic (assuming that it has one, which is doubtful).

Just a last remark: using UEFI you don't only use a file system format from Microsoft, the PE-COFF format of the UEFI executable is also specified initially by Microsoft as you can see in the UEFI specification

Attached Files

UEFI_Spec_2_9_2021_03_18.txt (8.3 KB, 7 views)

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Thanks for the links, Didier.