Unusual parition order

[fabian]

Hello everybody,

yesterday I installed KDE Neon and I am quite happy with it.

However, there is one thing I wonder about: During the installation process I've chosen the option of manually partitioning because the installer suggested a swap partition >15 GiB. At first I created the EFI parition, then the root one and last but not least the swap partition with a more reasonable size of 2 GiB.

As far as I can tell, the installation went fine. But when I checked the partitions in the installed system, I've noticed that the root partition occupied sda1, although I've created the efi partition first. To be fair, I've checked the partitions once again in Calamares before continuing via the "Change" button at the partitioning step to check whether I've set the right flags for the partitions. But this button did not say "Shuffle".

lsblk:

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda 8:0 0 238,5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 236G 0 part /
├─sda2 8:2 0 512M 0 part /boot/efi
└─sda3 8:3 0 2G 0 part [SWAP]

Do you have any idea why this could have happened? As far as I am aware, this should be a valid partitioning scheme, right?

Best regards,
Fabian

Additional information:

Operating System: KDE neon 5.27
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.104.0
Qt Version: 5.15.8
Kernel Version: 5.19.0-35-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-6500U CPU @ 2.50GHz
Memory: 15.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 520
Manufacturer: HP
Product Name: HP EliteBook 820 G3 zz0.4xgxtm8o5fuzz

[claydoh]

/dev/sdX labels are not terribly important, and the order they are listed may not reflect the order that are on the physical disk.
Have you looked at things with Partition Manager or Gparted? I am guessing that the efi partition is the first one on the drive. I can't recall if this is necessary, for the system to be able to boot, or not.

I an going to guess that Calamares may have decided to do its own thing? Or the kernel, etc decided to assign oddball ordering of the naming. Not sure which is more likely.
Did you happen to go back and edit or adjust a partition during your setup? I wonder if it acts like Gparted and Partition Manager, and sort of saves all the step one has taken before applying the changes.

But, if you want to have better control, and be able to double check things if the ordering is a bother, would be to partition the drive outside of the installer, from the live session first.

One may be able to manually edit the partition table, but it seems like too much work and risk, if you ask me.

[Qqmike]

The ESP partition can go anywhere, no problem. As you know, in a GPT (GUID Partition Table), you just need to mark it somehow as the ESP (EFI System Partition), usually by making it FAT32 and setting a boot flag on it; or the installer may simply call it efi or esp. In your case, it looks fine: sda2 8:2 0 512M 0 part /boot/efi

[linuxcruizer]

I suppose that my question is more from an IT point of view. Is your KDE Neon booting properly and are you able to perform all the functions? In other words, is the listing of your drives interfering with the functional ability of your KDE Neon OS? If the answer(s) is no, then you are golden and don't change anything.

I run both KDE Neon and Kubuntu. I have used both guided partitioning and manual partitioning. In some cases I have a swap partition and in others, I don't. My suggestion, to save time, let the installer partition for you. Ubuntu automatically creates a swap file of 2 GB in size. So if you have a swap file of 2 GB, again, you are golden.

Back in the day, the recommendation was to double the RAM size when creating a swap partition, another recommendation was 1 for 1 (example: 16 Gigs of Ram, 16 Gig Swap Partition and so on), in today's laptops, PCs, etc, it is questionable whether a swap partition is even necessary. I would not recommend spending a great deal of disk space on a swap partition. Anyway, you can always create a swap partition at any time in Linux, if you feel i is necessary.

[oshunluvr]

I would add, in the absence of no swap partition, it is far easier and far less potentially destructive to just use a swap file.

The current *buntu installer default is to create a swap file during installation if a swap partition isn't already present. Thus if you want a swap partition, manual partitioning is required.