How to create w/ KDE Part. Mgr. the initial, 1 mb unformatted partition that precedes the GRUB partition on a new SSD?

[RLynwood]

I still need someone to tell me how to get that 1 mb partition established so I can proceed with the EFI and other partitions. I sure need this help.

[claydoh]

You don't need it, or worry about it.

Here are my two drives.
nvme OS drive
Set up by me, using either PartitionManager, or in the OS installer's tools, I don't recall.


SATA SSD with Windows, shrunk for some extra space for an EXT4 and swap last week.
The drive was set up using the Windows installer, at least a year ago.



No 1Mb unallocated, or anything.

[claydoh]

Interestingly, my second NVME drive, currently in a USB case, has some un-partitioned space at the end.
But note the physical sector size:

I am going to guess this larger size may be the difference.
It simply won't allow me to resize that teensy bit to use all the space.
I am not going to bother finding out how/why, as it probably involves math.

[oshunluvr]

So GRUB-EFI no longer needs the EF02 partition because it's using the EFI partition to store the extra data?

Odd that my Kubuntu 24.04 EFI install does have the EF02 partition. gdisk reports the EFI partition type as EF00, not vfat - also unexpected.



vda2 is flagged as "boot" while vda1 is flagged as "bios-grub"

[claydoh]

vda2 is flagged as "boot" while vda1 is flagged as "bios-grub"

The VM is set up using an emulated BIOS or EFI? bios-grub IS needed on MBR/BIOS systems, or EFI firmware booting by emulating BIOS ("Legacy Mode") on GPT drives as grub or other boot files are too large to fit in the MBR
Or is it just GPT disks?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB#BIOS_systems
https://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc/?id=000021199
I still don't grok it tho

Here is my 23.10 vm (virt-manager), using EFI


here is my 22.04 vm using BIOS



And my real hardware:

[claydoh]

I still need someone to tell me how to get that 1 mb partition established so I can proceed with the EFI and other partitions. I sure need this help.

To reiterate, using an EFI install and GPT (the normal situation for the vast majority) you do NOT NEED that 1Mb space at all.

[RLynwood]

Claydoh, I see that your second screenshot shows a partition midway down the list that's unallocated/unknown that's 781.5 kb. Could that be essentially the same partition, just not at the disk's beginning as the one I'm concerned about? And your third screenshot shows that same partition but at the end of the disk, though its size is 1.32 MiB. I believe that's what you were pointing out.

Oshunluvr, thanks for including a screenshot of your KDE Par. Mgr., which shows exactly what I'm aiming for, the exact same sequence of partitions. That, again, brings me back to my original question: How did you get that unknown 1.00 MiB partition, /dev/vda1, in there? That's the one I can't seem to see how to create.

[Snowhog]

That, again, brings me back to my original question: How did you get that unknown 1.00 MiB partition, /dev/vda1, in there?

You are chasing after something that is not required. That it is 'sometimes' there, and 'sometimes not there' is purely an artifact of the installer on particular hardware. Nothing more. It is unimportant. Move on.

[claydoh]

Claydoh, I see that your second screenshot shows a partition midway down the list that's unallocated/unknown that's 781.5 kb. Could that be essentially the same partition, just not at the disk's beginning as the one I'm concerned about?

No, it is just empty space unallocated=empty + un-partitioned . Good catch, tho, as I did miss it. And I think I know why it is there (clonezilla and mis-matched drive sizes, plus laziness ,. that is what I am going with) Fixed, and screenshot updated

[RLynwood]

Re. post #22, I've always had that partition in my non-nvme drives. I even remember reading when I was learning* how to create these partitions that it was required (by Microsoft, I think); have no idea why.
*I guess I never did learn or I sill would remember all that.
Repeating something I said way back: I didn't need that partition at all on my new laptop's nvme ssd, but I'm not using exactly that kind of drive for this. So, if it is not necessary, why does ushunlur have it on his 24.04 drive, in exactly the same pattern as I've seen before (see above post)?

[Snowhog]

So, if it is not necessary, why does ushunlur have it on his 24.04 drive, in exactly the same pattern as I've seen before (see above post)?

It's there on his drive simply because it is. If it wasn't there, it wouldn't matter. IF it is going to exist, it will be by virtue of the installer. Again, whether it is there or it is not, doesn't matter one iota. Its existence (or non-existence) has no effect on the functioning of the installed OS. You are chasing a red herring.

[arsivci]

It is a relic from MBR days: Instead of UEFI, you simply partition your disk as GPT. Now, you can mimic A UEFI system as such: a tiny unformatted bios-grub partition, a boot partition for first OS mounted on /boot/efi plus another partition for / plus optionally another for /home. Then you create another /boot/efi + / + /home when installing a second linux distro, so and so forth. Just create a small 1MB unformatted partition with the installer and tick bios-grub and untick boot. That's what I had done when Ubuntu refused to install on my MBR disk sometime around 21.10, I guess.
This is not necessary for UEFI systems in which EFI partition simply holds all distributions. The last installed distro's grub controls the boot procedure. For instance if install Kubuntu first and Lubuntu second, Lubuntu's grub will be in charge. The installer can again leave 1MB unasked partitions at the beginning between partitions or the end depending on disk geometry or optimization which you should not be concerned with.
Below is mine; 24.04, manually partitioned:

[RLynwood]

True, it does not HAVE to be there. In fact, I don't have it on my laptop now (but I want to fix that), and it boots and works just fine. However, it is NOT useless; it has a safety/security function. Paragraph 9,* of https://fitzcarraldoblog.wordpress.c...-gpt-in-linux/ ("Partitioning hard disk drives for BIOS-MBR, BIOS-GPT and UEFI-GPT in Linux") explains its purpose & utility.

* "The ‘Protective MBR’ at the beginning of every GPT-partitioned disk (in the same location on the disk as a legacy MBR would be) is designed to prevent MBR-based disk utilities [from] misrecognising and possibly overwriting GPT-partitioned disks. A fake (i.e., it does not really exist) single partition called the ‘GPT Protective Partition’ (Code EE00) is specified in the Protective MBR to occupy as much of the drive as can be represented in an MBR, namely a maximum of 2TiB in the case of a disk with 512B sectors. Operating systems and tools not designed for GPT disks will read the Protective MBR and detect that the disk contains a single partition of unknown type and with no empty space, and will refuse to modify the disk unless the user deletes this partition. This design (i.e., the Protective MBR and GPT Protective Partition) was devised in order to minimise the possibility of (a) legacy software accidentally overwriting a GPT-partitioned HDD; (b) GPT-aware software accidentally overwriting an MBR-partitioned HDD (the absence of a partition of type EEh defined in the Protective MBR would indicate to GPT-aware operating systems and tools that the HDD is not GPT-partitioned)."

Here's Wikipedia's entry on the protective MBR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_P...PROTECTIVE-MBR

So, now that brings me back to my original question: How do I use KDE Part. Mgr. to create that 1 MiB, "unknown" protective partition? So far, I haven't seen how to do that.

[Qqmike]

The Protective MBR is an original feature of a GPT, and its purpose is as stated in the Wikipedia article.
Trying to reason this out now ...
So you already have a GPT, but it doesn't have any Protective MBR set up with it?
You can see why I'm asking: The Protective MBR should be created and coded (filled in) by the software that created the GPT in the first place.
I mean, otherwise, how would you create a 512B partition -- at the start of the disk -- to be the Protective MBR AND fill it in with the proper code to show that disk is full (to prevent MBR-aware software from trying to write to that disk)?
Unless you know how to write that code into an empty MBR ...
(I admit I didn't read this entire thread.)

Only other off-the-cuff thought I have is this: Has Rod Smith addressed anything about the Protective MBR on his website (which is, I believe, the original and most complete website on UEFI/GPT).

[RLynwood]

"So you already have a GPT, but it doesn't have any Protective MBR set up with it?" Using KDE Part. Mgr. in a Live USB of 23.10 (trying it), I clicked the "New Partition Table" button & applied it. The KPM shows the entire disk as Unallocated. Right-cicking on either image of the disk, then clicking on Properties, yields no mention of the partition table. Yet clicking on the Device button (tool bar), then on Properties, yields a different display that does say it is a GPT partition (& that the SMART status is Good). But there is no indication of a partition, just the entire band/bar that says Unallocated and gives its size. Oh, the upper band/bar, which is brown/gray, just says unallocated, but the blue colored line/bar in the table below says Partition: unallocated, Type: unknown. And it spans the entire disk.

Your next line makes it sound like that is my answer, but there is no protective partition, just the entire disk bar in display and size. So it looks like I'm not doing something or doing something wrong. Any suggestion?