On Sunday, 28 April 2024 06:24:09 BST Dale wrote:
> Michael wrote:
> > On Saturday, 27 April 2024 17:53:25 BST Dale wrote:
[snip ...]

> >> I did some research but still find myself in some muddy
> >> waters.  My take on some things I've read, I need a boot partition, not
> >> to be confused with the /boot for kernels, init thingys and such.  Where
> >> I get lost, most use gdisk.  I like cgdisk.  Before that I liked
> >> cfdisk.  Anyway, how do I set up that partition with cgdisk?  Any
> >> minimum size requirements or tiny is enough?
> > 
> > 1MB
> 
> OK.  You know that "alignment" thing that is always on the beginning of
> a drive, could it use it?  I think it is like 2MBs or something. 

It should be 1MB, sector 2048.  For 512 byte sector size you'd get:

2048 x 512 = 1,048,576 bytes

This is coded in on modern partitioning tools to ensure alignment of logical 
and physical sectors by default.  This alignment is critical for the 
performance of so called "Advanced Format" disks with 4096 byte size of 
physical sectors.  Therefore I strongly suggest you let the partitioning tool 
align its logical partitions where it feels best - at the 1MB boundary and not 
change it.

HOWEVER ...

If you are partitioning an old disk on a BIOS MoBo with logical/physical 
sector sizes both at 512/512 bytes, then you can take matters into your own 
hands and force it to start your 'BIOS Boot Partition' at sector 34.  Sectors 
0-33 are used by the MBR and the GPT headers, so leave these alone.

Start sector 34
End sector 2047


> >> Does it have to be a
> >> specific type?
> > 
> > Yes, it has to be set up as a "BIOS Boot Partition", with the "ef02", or
> > GUID 21686148-6449-6E6F-744E-656564454649.
> 
> Light bulb moment.  I've seen 8300 and friends, 8200 etc but never seen
> EF02 before.  Now I see what that type means.  That cleared up some
> muddy water.  That lead me to finding this, it has a nice table of
> common codes. 
> 
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GPT_fdisk

If you select [Type] in cgdisk and then press "L" it will list all the 
partition types available.

I suggest you familiarise yourself with gdisk, which has more options, or as 
already suggested GParted has an easy GUI to navigate through.