Ricardo Rosales

Thoughts, stories and ideas.

My Windows 11 and Pop!_OS 22.04 dual boot setup

4 minute read

Tools and characteristics

Setup

Install and configure Ventoy

  • Ventoy installation instructions here
  • Add Windows and Pop!_OS ISOs to ventoy folder in USB drive

Create partitions first using gparted in live Pop!_OS

  • Boot into Pop!_OS and create 5 partitions:
  1. The EFI partition I recommend you use 512MB FAT32 (it is more than necessary)
  2. The MSR partition should be 128MB FAT32 will be for Windows
  3. The actual windows installation whatever you want, I recommend more than 100GB NTFS
  4. The /boot partition for linux I recommend 1GB xfs
  5. The Linux LVM partition whatever is left of the disk using linux pv

Install Windows 11, without encryption

  • When choosing partitions press Shift + F10 to open command prompt
  • In Command prompt, run diskpart
  • Run list disk to get a list of disks and their numbers
  • Run select disk <number> to switch context to a specific disk
  • Run list partition to get a list of partitions and their numbers, you should see the partitions you created in step 1
  • Run select partition <number for EFI>
  • Run create partition efi size=512 to create efi partition
  • Run select partition <number for MSR>
  • Run create partition msr size=128 to create msr partition
  • Run exit to go back to windows installation
  • Make sure windows installer sees EFI and MSR partitions
  • Select the partition you created in step 1 for windows to be installed on
  • Install windows, updates, activate etc

Now install Pop!_OS (or Ubuntu)

  • Press Try Demo Mode to get to the desktop
  • Open terminal
  • sudo su -
  • fdisk -l to find your Linux LVM partition
  • cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/nvme#n#p# this will encrypt and ask you to setup a passphrase
  • cryptsetup open /dev/nvme#n#p# luks1 to decrypt the partition and mount it at /dev/mapper/luks1
  • pvcreate /dev/mapper/luks1 to create a Physical Volume that LVM can use
  • vgcreate vg_hostname /dev/mapper/luks1 (used vg_thinkpad last time)
  • lvcreate -L 100G -n lv_root vg_hostname # at least 100 GB
  • lvcreate -L 4G -n lv_swap vg_hostname
  • lvcreate -l100%FREE -n lv_home vg_hostname
  • Open the regular installer, choose custom partitioning
  • Create /boot without encryption
  • Select EFI partition and mount it at /boot/efi
  • Decrypt Linux LVM partition
  • Select 100 GB and pick / for it and format using xfs
  • Select 4 GB as swap
  • Select last LVM partition for /home and format using xfs
  • Should look something like this custom-install
  • When the installer finishes, don’t reboot
  • Open terminal, again
  • sudo su -
  • blkid /dev/nvme#n#p# for the Linux LVM partition
  • cryptsetup open /dev/nvme#n#p# luks1 to decrypt the partition
  • parted -ls
  • mount /dev/mapper/vg_thinkpad-lv_root /mnt Change volume group name
  • mount /dev/mapper/vg_thinkpad-lv_home /mnt/home Change vg name
  • mount /dev/nvme#n#p# /mnt/boot Change device and partition numbers
  • mount /dev/nvme1n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi Change device and partition numbers
  • for i in dev dev/pts proc sys run; do mount -B "/${i}" "/mnt/${i}"; done
  • chroot /mnt
  • We are now inside the installed system, not the live environment

  • cat /etc/crypttab Confirm UUID matched blkid output above

    # cat /etc/crypttab
luks1 UUID=0000000 none luks
  • if /etc/crypttab does not exist create it

  • Next, confirm the / root partition UUID matches the Pop_OS UUID in /boot/efi/EFI/Pop-OS*

    # grep "$(ls -d /boot/efi/EFI/Pop_OS-* | cut -d '-' -f2-)" /etc/fstab
UUID=3333333333  /  xfs  defaults  0  0

  • Confirm you have /, /boot, /boot/efi, /home and swap partitions in /etc/fstab

    # cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system>  <mount point>  <type>  <options>  <dump>  <pass>
PARTUUID=44444  /boot/efi  vfat  umask=0077  0  0
UUID=55555  /boot  xfs  defaults  0  0
UUID=666666  /home  xfs  defaults  0  0
UUID=3333333333  /  xfs  defaults  0  0
/dev/dm-2  none  swap  defaults  0  0
  • if swap in /etc/fstab does not show UUID, you can obtain it via the command: lsblk -f | grep 'swap', now update swap line in /etc/fstab
  • As of kernel 5.11.0-40-generic there’s a ~45-second pause at boot while the system tries to find a non-existent resume device, so we’ll disable resume.

  • Create the file /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/noresume.conf with contents:

    RESUME=none

  • If you want to mount /tmp as tmpfs (ramdisk) then:

    ln -s /usr/share/systemd/tmp.mount /etc/systemd/system/
systemctl enable tmp.mount

Add timeout to UEFI boot loader

Reboot. Spam your spacebar for the menu. Select with arrows, add timeout with “t” or reduce with “T” (+/- also work), select default with “d”. Hold “l” to boot linux after POST or “w” to boot Windows after POST without visiting the menu.

Updated:

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