User:Zulu Foxtrott/GentooOnARM/EasyInstall/RockchipPartitionTable

Default partitioning scheme
Throughout the remainder of the instructions, the following partitioning scheme will be used as a simple example layout:

What is the firmware partition?
Some target systems expect the firmware (the software that performs the first steps of hardware initialization upon powering on the system) to be present on the storage device of choice itself as they don't ship with this software preinstalled. In contrast to that, legacy and more traditional hardware usually comes with its firmware (also known as BIOS or UEFI) stored in read-only memory (ROM).

Depending on the target system the firmware is usually provided by the hardware vendor/manufacturer. However, for a growing - but still small - number of systems opensource U-Boot can provide the same functionality in form of the (Tertiary Program Loader) and the  (Secondary Program Loader).

Such partitions are not always necessary, but considering the low space consumption and how difficult it is to document the plethora of partitioning differences otherwise, it is recommended to create it in either case.

What is the bootloader partition?
On systems that are supported by mainline U-Boot, this is the partition where U-Boot Proper - the main U-Boot program - itself is installed.

Again, such partitions are not always necessary, but they also don't demand a lot of resources.

What is the EFI System Partition (ESP)?
When installing Gentoo on a system that uses UEFI to boot the operating system, then it is important that an EFI System Partition (ESP) is created. The instructions for below contain the necessary pointers to correctly handle this operation.

The ESP must be a FAT variant (sometimes shown as vfat on Linux systems). The official UEFI specification denotes FAT12, 16, or 32 filesystems will be recognized by the UEFI firmware, although FAT32 is recommended for the ESP. Proceed in formatting the ESP as FAT32:

The EFI system partition is not required when the target system is supported by mainline U-Boot.