Carl Lowenstein wrote:
On 11/18/05, Ralph Shumaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
DJA wrote:
Ralph Shumaker wrote:
DJA wrote:
But have you looked at what the corresponding GID actually is for a
given user created with the GUI tool? I prefer the UID and GID
(numerical values) to match.
what does
$ ls -lan /home/
show?
I'm not around that PC. But I did confirm that both the files owner
and group displayed correctly in each user's home directory. Just
looking on my own PC here, where I used the GUI tool to set up the
users, the first user "rafael" has matching UID and GID (500). The
second user has matching also (501). After that, I set up a special
group (502). In hindsight, I probably should have set it up with an
unusually high GID. But I didn't. Much, much later (very recently),
I added a third user. He got UID 502 and GID 503, but only because
they each were the next in line respectively.
04:47:55 $ ls -lan /home/
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 5 0 0 4096 Oct 27 09:58 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 1000 0 4096 Nov 12 20:42 ..
drwx------ 19 501 501 4096 Jan 13 2005 dick
drwx------ 21 502 503 4096 Nov 12 02:19 gvl
drwx------ 52 500 500 4096 Nov 15 04:35 rafael
04:48:05 $
Yes. gvl has a UID matching SpecialGroup's GID. Why wouldn't gvl have
a UID of 502 and a GID of 502? Because SpecialGroup already has a GID
of 502. I would have set gvl's UID/GID to 504/504.
I would have also. I just was not thinking about that when I added it.
But the only time I ever see it is when I go to the Users and Groups
GUI. In normal use, why would you ever use -n (in ls -lan)?
Only when troubleshooting, which I think was the situation here.
Well, not here. I didn't have a problem. It started with DJA replying
to my request for what to keep, how to keep it, and how to transition it
to a fresh install of an upgraded version. He warned against using the
GUI "User and Group" program because it has misbehaved for him. I
replied that I have not experienced its shenanigans. My mismatched
numbers resulted from my own misstep.
Which is why I don't like the GUI tool's automatic numbering scheme.
BTW, I don't ever remember having this problem with RH9 and earlier.
RH9 is where I did it (on my PC, the special group with no user that is).
I suppose I could have set up a UID along with the special GID, but I
did not want to create a user's home directory for it, although come to
think of it, that may have helped in other ways. Oh well. If I ever
care to deal with it, I will correct it all then.
You can have a UID without a corresponding user's home directory. Look at
nobody:nobody:x:99:99:Nobody:/:/sbin/nologin
I have no idea how to "look at" that. I've seen "nobody" somewhere.
And I know where to find "/" and "/sbin/nologin". But as to what the
rest of that means, I haven't a clue. I also don't know if the ":"
links each item in some way or another. Eight items.
And what is the reasoning behind partitioning, anyway? Either I
never understood this, or I have just plain forgotten.
May I assume that when you an installation, you just let the
installer make partitioning decisions for you?
My reasoning? Stuff tends to fill all available space. That includes
hard drives. Every new incarnation of most any Linux distribution
seems to need more and more space on the root partition. I never
throw stuff away so my /home partition is never big enough [1].
And inevitably I make at least one partition way too big at the same
time I make another, more important, partition way too small. Of
course, were I a fortune teller, I could avoid such mistakes, but as
I'm not, LVM is the next best thing.
Nothing you stated here seems to argue against one big partition
(aside from swap). You answer a question I did not ask. You
answered: "What is your reasoning behind partition sizes?" I was
not asking about the reason for sizing the chunks, but rather the
reason for chunking it in the first place.
It's far easier to re-install when I can reformat all partition except
those I don't want to format. For a really simple setup, I have a
separate /home partition. When I want to upgrade my distro (e.g. FC1
-> FC4), I tell the installer to format all partitions except /home.
That way I still have all my users' stuff - including a reference to
their respective UID/GID.
If I have some apps I installed to /usr/local, I can tell the
installer not to format /home and /usr/local.
Even better, you can move everything from /usr/local to /home/local
and then bind-mount it.
So, at this point, it seems that it would be a good idea to have /home
and /usr/local as separate partitions. And to be easily resizable, it
would be good to have them as LVMs.
When reinstalling, you can tell the formatter to leave an LVM alone?
yes
When reinstalling, the distro being installed will know about the apps
you installed previously in /usr/local?
Your search path $PATH will presumably include /usr/local/bin
But the things installed in /usr/local and /usr/local/bin presumably
would not be usable much between distributions, right? If so, your
previous comment about moving /usr/local to /home/local and
bind-mounting sounds like the best way to go.
(My original question is about moving (installing vs upgrading) to an
upgraded version.)
If you have only one big partition then
o If your partition gets messed up bad, you lose *everything*[1].
o If your / (root) partition gets messed up bad, you lose
*everything*[1].
o When you do upgrades of your distro, you have to restore *all* data
and /home directories if you reformat [2].
o It's more difficult to reallocate space from over-allocated
directories to under-allocated directories (e.g. you just ran
out of space in /tmp because the latest distro upgrade needed
five more gigabytes in /usr ).
This last item sounds like a reason *for* one big partition. Or at the
very least, this last item sounds like an argument for resizable
partitions as opposed to solid partitions. Can an LVM span drives?
Yes. Although you probably don't want to do that as a newbie LVM user.
Heh! I don't doubt it. :-)
--
KPLUG-List@kernel-panic.org
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
