On Saturday 23 June 2001 20:41, Kouros Owzar wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I decided to reinstall LM 8.0 using Reiser FS partitions. It
> is my understanding that this FS is more robust against
> accidental system shutdowns than standard ext2 Linux
> partitions. In addressing these questions, please keep in mind
> that I put higher value on stability than on speed and
> efficiency of the FS.
>
>
> I have a dual Xeon II system with 256MB RAM + 18.2 GB U2 SCSI
> drive. It currently has 4 NTFS + 1 FAT 32 partitions AND
> / /boot /root /home /usr /usr/local /tmp /var + 2 Linux
> swap partitions. The latter were all created using diskdrake.
>
> a. Are they Reiser FS modules in LM 8.0 experimental or are
> have they been thoroughly tested?
They are the most recent reiser versions and our tests say they
work, sort-of. Notail mounts can cause a kernel oops on
shutdown. Default mounts can freeze the system under stress.
And the reiser patches seem to make nfs sensitive to heavy
stress.
> b. Do Reiser FS partitions happily coexist with standard Linux
> swap partitions? What about their co-existence with NTFS
> partitions. I am asking this because, after I reinstalled LM
> 8.0 with Reiser partitions, I can no longer boot Windows 2000
> with LILO (It worked fine when I was running LM 8.0 using
> standard ext2 Linux partitions). I should point out that I
> rebuild the Reiser FS trees so that may have damaged the
> Windows partitions.
That is an interesting report. If you have a step-by-step on
what you did, I know a few kernel hackers who would love to read
it.
> c. If I have 256MB of RAM should I have 4 x 128 swap
> partitions or 1 x 512 MB swap partition (I am under the
> assumption that one should have 256x2=512MB of total swap
> space)?
When you begin to have a lot of memory it is the time to start
_thinking_ of needs for swap space. For most purposes, swap
space does not need to increase as memory will more frequenly
handle the load. Under certain circumstances (multiple servers
with many incarnations, or a single user doing video editing on
the fly) a 7G swap partition might not be big enough.
> d. How many partitions can I create using diskdrake? Diskdrake
> in LM 8.0 only allows the creation of 8 Reiser + 2 swap
> partitions in addition to my
> existing 4 NTFS and 1 FAT32 partition.
On how many drives?
The device directory /dev has /dev/hda (whole device) plus
/dev/hda1 through /dev/hda16. It appears you used three
primary, one to handle an extended partition, and 12 extension
partitons, that's 16.
On the other hand, you can do more.. you need to add the nodes
to the /dev directory by hand
mknod -m 0744 /dev/hda17 b 03 17
mknod -m 0744 /dev/hda18 b 03 18
.
mknod -m 0744 /dev/hdb20 b 03 84
.
mknod -m 0744 /dev/hdc33 b 16 33
The magic numbers at the end are major and minor numbers. The
major number like 3 and 16 are all listed in
/usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-2.4.3/devices.txt
The minor numbers are trickier 0 is the first device on an ide
channel (a, c, e...) and 0+1 through 0+63 are the possible
partitions, while 64 is the second device (b, d, f, h, j, l, n,
p) and 64+1 through 64+63 are the possible partitions. The -m
is a mode setting as in the chmod instruction which you can have
detail on by man chmod in a terminal.
So if you are installing, leave a gaping hole on your disk
totally unpartitioned and crowd some of your others together
temporarily, then add the devices and run diskdrake from a
console or from a terminal in graphic mode in a live system and
make your additional partitions. I recommend that if you want
say, for example, /usr/local as a separated partition that you
make /spusr/local as the mount point (spare /usr/local)
then
mount /spusr/local
cp -a /usr/local/* /spusr/local
umount /spusr/local
then use an editor to change the mount point in /etc/fstab to
/usr/local and do this freaky move
cd /usr/local && rm -r * -f && cd ~
umount /usr/local && mount /usr/local
The first line clears the directory you were using for
/usr/local and the second unmounts the one in /etc/mtab and
mounts the one in /etc/fstab
Naturally, since you are asking such advanced questions, I can
depend on you not to shriek, scream and wail if you do something
suicidal like make a separate /etc or /bin or /sbin or /lib
partition, n'est-ce pas?
And will someone please post why making those separate should
not be done?
Civileme
