Thank you for some thoughtful suggestions.
I have just gotten a 500GB SATA drive, intending to back up all of my
data. What I fear most about LVM is the possibility of losing the
data somehow. I may be too yesterday, but I sense that ordinary
partitions (at least "ordinary" to me) will be more portable. I may
want to unpack my system, and carry my Drives with me. I've been
trying to work around the same /home/USER directories for several
years. I have archived them from time to time when they have gotten
too crazy. And (correct me if I'm wrong) I've become some kind of
intimidated about using the same directory and username on a new
install, so I generally end up copying all the pieces over.
Outside of this possibly irrational fear that LVM mayn't be portable,
I actually did delete an entire install once that was on LVM, but that
was due to my own ignorance. I am no less ignorant now, but if my
fears about portability can be allayed, I would be willing to try.
And learn.
Be that as it may, I have just cleansed my 74GB 10000RPM drive, and
look forward to installing on this, and hanging various directories
off of this. Assuming, for now, I am only going to be using some
unexotic partitioning system, which partitions will be most
advantageously situated on this fast drive? I am thinking along
these lines:
FAST PARTITION
/
/boot
/usr/bin
/usr/sbin
/usr/local/
part of home with well-used files
/tmp?
I have a lot of ARCHIVED data that should be on a separate partition
and this could be slow.
I actually find it makes quite a bit of difference, the speed difference.
I have looked around for comments about this strategy. Maybe if LVM
is indeed portable, this could be incorporated into the scheme.
Abut Grub issues: I may try to edit the grub that was installed by
Ubuntu. However, one of the serious issues I have encountered with
Ubuntu Hardy Heron has been a capricious device assignment scheme that
is not consistent from install to install. And I had to edit
/boot/grub/menu.lst to the correct partition to boot from because even
grub didn't get it right out of the box! After three or four ubuntu
installs, ubuntu wouldn't touch grub anymore, so I booted a beta
Gentoo 2008.0 and was able to rectify the master boot record. Maybe
my motherboard is crazy---an ASUS M2N-E.
Thank you again. I'm already feeling better about getting this done.
Alan
