The bumpy road has potholes for us all. Mine is (still) called Freeswan.
Is it possible to install your OS onto a system with 5 zillion partitions?
Sure. It's also possible to swim to Hawaii so you can have your holiday
there less expensively. I wouldn't recommend either. I just wonder what
benefit there is in making things more difficult than they need to be?
Windows 2000 could be installed from 1.2 meg 5.25 inch floppys too. But why
bother? You asked us for advice, and we made our recommendation. If you
want to go the hard way, be your guest, but accept that this is
INTENTIONALLY doing it the hard way. We'll continue to help as best as we
can, but none of us have done this, nor are we likely to, so our help will
be largely based on guesses.
Chopping your disk into several pieces is not an answer. In Linux, you nay
have several mountpoints, one for /home, one for /tmp one for /var and
another for /var/log, heck, maybe even one for /home/whereIstoremp3s. It
doesn't matter. The end result though will be that when you start from / it
will appear as one file system. This was done to make it easier for the end
user. Having several things in different places is just an additional
complexity that isn't needed. You don't park one of your cars in my garage,
and another in joe's garage, (thinking that this way, if your garage
collapses from the weight of the snow, at least the cars are safe). Why
would you do the same thing with data? There are good reasons to seperate
/home and /tmp and /var/log and /boot. There are also good reasons to just
make a swap and a / partition. The main reason is that it is easy, and you
won't end up with /home running it's 2 gig partition out of space while
/boot's 2 gig partition is 99% empty. At least in the beginning, that's the
route I'd suggest, personally. Suggesting less partitions isn't the company
line. It's neccessary. Even Microsoft (finally) is realizing this, and
that's why they now support mountpoints, like Unix has for decades. The
reason partitions were initially divided up is that Fat 16 (I think 8 & 12
also, but I never hit the barrier) only had enough address space for it's
block size to reach 2 gigs. So people HAD to split their drives up. Once
Fat32 came out, that limitation was removed. The only reason I'd go with
seperate partitions now is so that I could put a dynamic swap file on a
seperate partition where there is nothing else. Then the swap file would
never get fragmented. Also I'd create a second partition and keep a ghost
image of the first partition there so that if someone TOTALLY screwed up
their primary partition, it could be recovered from a local copy of ghost.
Otherwise, partitioning into several pieces is silly. Particularly with
Windows, for reasons you've already covered, namely, installing a file onto
the d: drive will also make changes into my OS drive, which is probably c:
when it changes the registry. It's not a great idea on Windows (Which is
why the installed doesn't do it when you install 2000), and it's not a great
idea with *nix (Which is why the installers don't do it there either.)
Having a few partitions is OK, when you do them for a reason, but you don't
seem to have a reason, so it just looks like added complexity with no real
benefit. If you said that you were worried that /var/log would bring down
your system because you anticipated several gigs of log files per night,
then it would make sence to make that a seperate partition.
You can do it. Nobody is arguing against that. We're just saying that *nix
has been around for better than 30 years. The recommendations that exist
are very well tested, and well thought out. They've proven the test of time
for decades. If you have a reason for breaking them, then fine, break 'em.
but if there is no reason, then don't. They are there to make things better
for you. And that's valuable, especially when the road is REALLY rough
(like when you first start). Otherwise, you'll end up leaving Linux because
it's too frustrating. But really it won't be the fault of the OS.
Kev.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley A. Schultz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2002 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: (clug-talk) Install/Boot problem
>
> Kev:
>
> Thanks for your reply.
>
> On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Kevin Anderson wrote:
>
> > This isn't the Windows world. There is no registry, so stupid problems
> > like what you are describing simply do not arise. Linux uses a much
> > cleaner and simpler system, more like DOS, or Windows pre95...
>
> All these and several more are the reason why I'm trying to use Linux. The
> road is a bit bumpy, however.
>
> > ... Unlike Windows, Linux gets faster and more powerful with every
> > release. Windows gets arguable more powerful, but it's definitely slower
> > with every release. (a 486 can't physically address enough RAM to even
> > load the Win2K kernel, for example...) On the other hand, if you run RH
> > 8 instead of RH 7.1, it will run faster on the same hardware, and you
> > have the advantage of having a more up to date (security wise) product.
>
> Neither does it have some stupid feature where you have to log onto
> someone else's server and ask permission to upgrade or add a new feature!
>
> > I believe the 2 TB limitation was with the 2.2 Kernel. Regardless, this
> > won't be an issue for a home user any time soon.
>
> At least probably not in my lifetime. However, I remember what Bill Gates
> said in 1981 ("640K ought to be enough for anybody.") and wonder.
>
> > Personally, I'd suggest that having so many little partitions will just
> > make things more difficult for you. It shouldn't be a problem from the
> > OSes perspective, but I would never do it, and from the sound of others
> > on this list, they wouldn't either. My suggestion would be to devote 1
> > HDD to Linux, and 1 to Doze, then let the Linux installer auto-partition
> > the drive for you during it's install. That's a good way to start.
>
> Difficult, yes. Impossible, doubtful. We make progress by blazing new
> ground. So far no one has given me a really solid reason why I should use
> larger or fewer partitions except in vague generalities. I'm still waiting
> for a solid, practical reason for not doing so. I am not holding my
> breath.
>
> Fifteen years ago the concept of having more than 1 hard disk was
> outrageous and the technology may not even have existed for partitioning
> disks. At that point in our history we neither owned enough files to make
> use of such extravagances nor the drives that would support them. Today my
> Window$ operating system lives in 1 partition and encompasses 10,237 files
> by itself! (I counted them.) I have a 1Gb partition reserved for only 3 of
> my larger applications that's about packed full with 10,037 files! I have
> another 1 Gb partition for the rest of my apps that holds 8,557 files.
>
> I haven't had the opportunity to count the Linux files but that'll
> probably happen as soon as I get it up and running smoothly.
>
> In that same period of time, hard disks have increased in size by a factor
> of 750 or 800 and the prices have dropped from almost $1,000 for a 10 Mb
> monster to about $138 for an off-the-shelf 40 Gb.
>
> How do we deal with this incredible explosion in complexity and
> application & storage media size? The answer is right before our eyes:
> chop our disks into pieces that can be handled more easily.
>
> My system for partitioning my disks and organizing my applications and
> data may not fit the "party line," but that party line is going to have to
> change and my guess is that it'll have to change pretty soon. The
> technology mandates it.
>
> Maybe I'm just ahead of my time by a few months (or a little behind!).
> Maybe the others are just a little behind or ahead, that's probably just a
> matter of perspective or personal opinion. The facts are that there should
> be no reason why I can't spread my files over 20+ partitions. The problem
> isn't whether I can or should, but rather why I can't and how can I fix
> it.
>
> Enough of my soap boxing! Thanks again for all your help.
>
>
> Peace, health, wisdom and wealth. Live long and prosper.
>
>
> Stan Schultz
> Techno-Geek wannabe
>
> Home: (403) 230-1911
> Work: (403) 220-8570
> FAX: (403) 270-8928
> Webpage: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~schultz
>
>
>
