On Saturday 22 January 2005 04:38 pm, Julie Sloan wrote:
> Tom Brinkman wrote:
> > On Saturday 22 January 2005 10:32 am, Julie Sloan wrote:
> >>I copied /home to a CD, will reinstall 10.0, and hopefully
> >>during the reinstall will set up a storage partition or two.
> >>I'm dualbooting WinXP and Mandrake; have the Win on the
> >>original harddrive and Mandrake on its own, separate, hd. I
> >>can "see" into windoze from Mandrake but cannot write to it.
> >
> > Actually you seem to have alot'a snap for a newbie.
>
> I hope I've learned a little bit in six months?? But a lot of
> what you say from here on looks like alphabet soup on the first
> pass :) So I'll read it again, slower...
If most of us admitted it, we had to, or thought it wise to
re-install linux about a dozen times in our first six months ;)
> > In the
> > re-install, make a separate /home dir this time ;) Also,
> > IME, one real big /stor dir is better than many.
>
> Why one real big /stor dir?
User needs and preference. I have 4 stor partitions. I often
encounter running out of space on one, when there's room on
others. Use of dirs (folders) to separate movies, sound,
pictures, essential backups, and misc would'a been more efficient
on one humongous size drive.
> Wouldn't it be better to have new
> downloads (from unknown sources; I don't mean rpms) go to a
> separate partition to isolate them just "in case", and to have
> certain types of large files, for instance MP3s, default to
> their own space?
Choice of partitions and file systems is a matter of
preference and user experience. Basically for partitions,
/ this is the root directory (not to be confused with 'root'
user). It's the top level mount point, that all other
directories come under. Even if they are on separate partitions.
Everything on Linux is a file, partitions are put on mount
points. To illustrate, type 'l /*' in a console and scroll up.
Even better, type 'tree /less' (you'll probly need to 'urpmi
tree' first)
/home it's a good idea to have this on it's own partition,
mostly for reasons you've already discovered. It can be a bad
idea when a small HDD (<13gig) is used for Linux tho. IE,
inefficient use of limited disk space. When I first began with
linux it was on a 256mb HDD. I used one big 'ol / and a swap
file. / is the only absolutely mandatory partition
/swap almost imperative, altho a swap file can be used instead
(as above). General advice is to make it the same size as
installed ram, if that is at least 512mb. For smaller amounts of
ram, double the size of the /swap partition, eg ram=128, make
swap at least 256. So for ram=256, /swap should be 512. MOF, IMO,
512 is about the minimum. It's what I have now, an next install
I'm gonna double it. For laptops that suspend to ram, /swap
should always be at least 30% more than installed ram, if not
double.
/boot while this preference is outdated, IMO it's still a good
idea to put /boot on a separate partition. Use of ext3 is an
added precaution when other partitions use a journalled
filesystem. IIRC, it's still mandatory for XFS.
Further separate partitioning is mostly for production servers
and for their unique security concerns. When attempted by newbies
it can cause files that are needed to boot, to not be available
during init. Sort'a fatal ;>
File systems; Journalled is the way to go. Your choice but
I've never had any problems with ReiserFS. Till now ... 2.6.10
kernels, and maybe newer ones have some issues with reiser,
particularly on sata HDD's. I expect it to be cleared up tho. If
this concerns you, use ext3. It's nothin but the old reliable
ext2 Linux has used forever, with journalling capability tacked
on. It's sort'a slow and clumsy tho.
> > As to 'see' into Win$ux, that why I left it at
> > 'complicated'. M$ ntfs FS's (and there are several versions),
> > can be read by Linux, but write support is (intentionally by
> > M$) dangerous and not supported. I'm not even sure if a
> > tarball stored on ntfs can be transferred to Linux.
>
> Yes it can - is how I got a modem driver when linux wasn't
> recognizing my conexant last summer. D/L'ed it into WinXP &
> then cp'd it into Mandrake.
>
> > BTW, when you re-install I recommend ReiserFS. And make a
> > separate /boot partition (~50mb's, ext3). Ratio of '/' to
> > '/home' will depend on how much total space you have, but
> > IME, 8gig for '/' and 12gig for /home is plenty ... specially
> > if you set aside storage space. For small Linux 'only'
> > drives (<13gig), I believe putting everything one big 'ol '/'
> > partition, with a suitable /swap partition is best use.
>
> Thanks for the suggestions. I have 200G total on two drives,
> but 80 of that has Win$ux spread all over it. If I make a,
> say, 20G partition on the 120G drive, (where my crippled
> Mandrake 10.0 is now) then move (?) the 4G of WinXP OS into it,
> could I reformat that 80G into storage space? The thought of
> it is pretty daunting; I am very new to this and know very
> little command-line stuff.
I believe it's possible to move XP, but someone who actually
knows will have to comment. I'd just put Linux on the 120g and
leave Winblows as is (on the 80?). MOF, my Mandrake is on a 120g
pata/ide HDD
~ $ df |grep hda
/dev/hda6 8.5G 5.3G 3.3G 62% /
/dev/hda5 46M 20M 24M 46% /boot
/dev/hda7 12G 2.8G 9.1G 24% /home
/dev/hda8 56G 24G 32G 43% /stor2
see also, 'fdisk -l'
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 65 522081 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda2 66 9964 79513717+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 66 71 48163+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 72 1178 8891946 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 1179 2722 12402148+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 2723 9964 58171333+ 83 Linux
Currently /home is fairly low. I often fill it up (I'm d/l'g
4 gigs to it as I type) and need to move stuff
to /stor, /stor2, /stor3, or /stor4 or onto CD's.
I also need 'extra' room for temporary operations, eg, video
manipulations of very large files. The 4gig of .rar's/par's I'm
d/l'g now will need at least an equal amount of space to extract
and assemble. While we can all make suggestions, your partitions
and sizes will have to come from your own experience.
I always prefer to put /swap as the first partition (hd?1) on
a drive. R/W's slow as much as 40% the further down a partition
is on a drive, regardless of the drive's rpms, size, number of
disks, age, etc. hda2 is a primary containing 5,6,7,8. Note the
Start and End cylinders (and _no_ overlap ;)
> When you refer to '/' , is that where /mnt is now, and is that
> where I'd access other partitions from, once I have them?
see above ;)
>
>
> thanks,
> Julie
Well, I suspect you'll soon be a helper around here, but a
suggestion. Ask one question/topic per post. Also remember that
all you'll get around here is advice and opinions. Most all are
given to be helpful, some even turn out to be right ;)
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
Proud to be an American
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