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I have been searching for a guide on how to install ubuntu server on 3TB gpt partition, but with no luck. I wonder if it is even possible ?

I read that GPT cannot be used to boot with.

Also, I would like to use LVM on that drive, so in my case I would have 2*3TB drives with with ubuntu server on it and extended partition with LVM for use of large amount of files. I'm new to linux so I hope its not a dumb question.

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    Certainly possible. My laptop here runs Trusty on GPT partition without any issue. I have no uefi board so I have to create a small partition at the beginning of the disk for bios_grub
    – Flint
    May 19, 2014 at 13:12
  • LVM is a seperate question. You will find that many who have experience with LVM may not have it with GPT and vice versa. I think that by asking these questions seperately you may have better results.
    – Elder Geek
    May 19, 2014 at 13:27

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Two types of firmware are in common use today, and the answer is slightly different for each of them:

  • Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) -- This type of firmware is as old as the IBM PC. It's very rudimentary; its boot process is to read the first sector from the hard disk and run the code it finds there. If that code is a boot loader that understands GPT, then a BIOS can boot from a GPT disk. There is a caveat, though: Some BIOSes (or some EFIs in BIOS compatibility mode; see the next point) flake out in one way or another when they see GPT disks. It's usually possible to work around such problems, but they can be difficult to deal with if you don't understand them. See my page on the subject for more details. Also, if you use GRUB 2 as your boot loader (which Ubuntu does by default), you'll need a BIOS Boot Partition to boot from a GPT disk. The Ubuntu installer sets this up by default, but you'll need to do it yourself if you pre-partition your disks.
  • Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) -- This type of firmware (more recent versions of which are known as the Unified EFI or UEFI) is a replacement for the BIOS. It boots in an entirely different way from BIOS, storing boot loaders and related files on an EFI System Partition (ESP). GPT is part of the EFI specification, so of course EFI-booting from a GPT disk is not a problem. Most modern EFIs have a BIOS compatibility layer, so you can boot a BIOS-mode boot loader on most modern PCs, but these often have GPT quirks, as noted earlier.

LVM is not a problem with either method of booting, although if you use LVM, you'll do well to create a separate /boot partition outside of the LVM. You can use LVM with either MBR or GPT disks.

The term "extended partition," BTW, is meaningful only with the older Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme. An extended partition holds logical partitions, and is a workaround for the 4-partition limit of MBR's primary partition table. GPT lacks this limit and so has no need of either extended or logical partitions. In your use, I think you didn't mean extended partitions, but rather an LVM volume group that holds logical volumes. A logical volume is much more flexible than a partition, but requires more complex tools to manage.

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  • I have a question about the last paragraph of your answer. I was using the parted program to repair a USB flash drive that had been rendered otherwise impossible to format using dd. I was asked to choose the partition type: primary, extended or logical. I wanted there to be only one FAT partition on the disk so I chose primary. Was this the correct choice?
    – karel
    May 20, 2014 at 12:45
  • Primary/logical status and filesystem type (FAT, ext2fs, Btrfs, etc.) are unrelated. Primary/logical status is important for booting some OSes, such as Windows (which more-or-less requires a primary partition), and influences how many partitions you can have on a disk (because of the 4-partition limit of MBR). If the disk was GPT, the question was pointless; some libparted-based tools ask about primary/logical status even on GPT disks, then proceed to completely ignore the answer given because it's meaningless on GPT disks.
    – Rod Smith
    May 20, 2014 at 12:48
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I'm not sure about installing grub to a GPT partition table, but as for installing to one, that is entirely possible, and just as easy as on a regular MS-DOS partition table, I personally have a few distros on a 3tb drive that uses a GPT table. All you do is make the partitions, and install the system like you would any other drive.

If you have a spare small HDD, you could always use that, or even put grub onto a USB thumb drive, and boot off of that, just make sure to edit the device boot order in you system BIOS.

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