breadcrumbs: Chromium OS Developer Guide > page_name: disk-layout-format title: Disk Layout Format

Boards can define their own disk layout, with different partitioning ordering and sizes.

A board may specify its own layout by placing a layout file in overlay-<board>/scripts/disk_layout.json; if no layout file is found, the default one in scripts/build_library/legacy_disk_layout.json will be used.

A layout file consists of a “base” layout, plus zero or more other types of layout. Common types would be “usb” and “vm”. Each of these layouts is made up of one or more partitions.

The base layout is special, since it's the layout on which all other layouts get overlaid upon. The base layout represents the “installed” layout, the way things should be once the image has been installed onto a device. The “usb” layout represents how things should look on a USB image (typically, this means that ROOT-B is 1 block long).

See https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/crosutils/+/HEAD/build_library/README.disk_layout for the exact format details as they may change over time.

Here's an example of a partition entry in a layout:

{

“num”: 5,

“label”:“ROOT-B”,

“type”:“rootfs”,

“blocks”:“4194304”,

“fs_blocks”:“217600”

}

The “num” field defines the numerical ID of the partition in the GPT. The “label” field defines the name of the partition in the GPT table and also the label of the filesystem if the given partition has a filesystem. The “blocks” field defines the number of blocks in size the partition is. Optionally, you can also specify the “fs_blocks” field. This defines how large the filesystem on the given partition should be. If you don't specify “fs_blocks”, the entire partition is used.

The block size for a partition and a filesystem is defined at the top of the layout file, in the metadata section:

“metadata”:{

“block_size”: 512,

“fs_block_size”: 4096

},

Both of these values should be specified in bytes.

FAQ

  • I want to use gmerge and I used to use the --rootfs_size and --rootfs_partition_size options to make my root filesystem larger to aid this, how do I do this now?
    • Open up legacy_disk_layout.json and edit the ROOT-A/ROOT-B blocks and fs_blocks to your desired sizes, using the block sizes specified at the top of the file. Then copy the values for ROOT-A into the the blocks/fs_blocks for the usb layout. If you want to do this for a VM, copy the values into the vm layout too.