This part assumes you have partitioned your drive in a way that is satisfactory for both you and your computer.
If you are using root on Root on ZFS, chances are you have already formatted your partitions.
Likewise, if you are using Disk encryption, that will influence what you do here.
Root filesystem
The filesystem you choose for the root partition is usually up to you. The typical most common choice of root filesystem is Ext4 or XFS. Chimera does not mandate anything specific.
An example, assuming /dev/sda2 is your root partition:
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
When installing on SD cards, you might want to disable the journal.
You can do it by passing the option -O ^has_journal after mkfs.ext4.
Raspberry Pi
Since Raspberry Pi systems often rely on MBR, which does not support
partition labels, the default cmdline uses a filesystem label as root.
Therefore, you might want to ensure that your root filesystem is
labeled root. Alternatively, you can edit /boot/cmdline.txt after
installation to reflect your desired configuration.
Boot filesystem
A common case for this is if your root filesystem is not supported
by your bootloader, assuming it needs to be. Ext4 is a frequent
choice as well, some people use Ext2 and others. For systemd-boot,
it usually needs to be FAT32 (and its type must be Linux extended boot).
EFI System Partition
The ESP always uses the FAT32 filesystem. Assuming it is /dev/sda1,
you can format it like this:
# mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1
PowerPC PReP Boot
POWER systems using this partition do not put any filesystem on it. It is, however, very important for bootloader installation that it is empty.
Assuming it’s /dev/sda1, you should erase it:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1
Apple_Bootstrap partition
On Power Macs using the bootstrap partition, there needs to be a legacy
HFS created in zeroed space. Given a /dev/sda2 bootstrap partition,
do the following:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda2
# hformat -l bootstrap /dev/sda2
If you don’t have hformat, at least on Chimera it’s present in the
hfsutils package, which can be installed like so:
# apk add hfsutils
Swap
Let’s assume you have a swap partition at /dev/sda3. You will
want to create your swap space on it like this:
# mkswap /dev/sda3
Other partitions
This is usually up to you.