Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Kyle Bader kyle.ba...@gmail.com wrote: - SSD vs 1rpm vs big-and-cheap hard drive for rootfs/system files. I lean toward the latter since RAM caches it anyway. SSDs can make things snappier for boot times. Having lots of ram for disk cache eliminates the benefit after booted since ram is even faster than a SSD. I decided on a hard drive for the primary disk rather than SSD. For a combination of size (1TB), performance (according to benchmarks) and price (according to my pockets) I chose a Samsung HD103SJ (7200rpm, 1TB, 32MB cache, 2x500gb platters) drive which appears to have great overall performance and low operating temperatures. I haven't received the disks yet so for now I'm just playing with an old spare drive and installed Windows 7 (trial) for configuring/testing the overclock settings since all of the motherboard tools are in Windows only. Once I have it running fast cool, it's Gentoo time! I also tried the Gentoo LiveDVD 10.1, written to a USB flash drive (with unetbootin), and it worked great. I had the PC hooked up to my TV with HDMI and it used proper 16:9 resolution, got DHCP address automatically and everything seemed to simply work properly. It will be great to use Konsole and Firefox during install, compared to having a 80x25 terminal like I did many years ago in my last install. Good job to the LiveDVD team!
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
On Wed, Mar 03, 2010 at 05:34:34PM +0100, Alex Schuster wrote I had this once on a smaller machine, but now I'd prefer it the other way around, there's plenty of space available. I have 15G for distfiles and pkgdir, so I don't worry about some 100MB for the portage tree. I managed to pull off a cute stunt that... a) minimizes wasted disk space b) retains the ability to wipe and re-install the OS, without wiping user data The example below uses /dev/sda and a 500 megabyte / partition. I think I could get away with 300. Substitute as appropriate for your system (hda or wharever) Step 1) Partition a blank hard drive. - partition the entire hard drive (500 gigabytes in my case) as one gigantic extended partition (partition 1) - create a 500 megabyte logical linux (type 83) partition of at the beginning of the extended partition (partition 5). This will be the / partition - next, create a logical linux swap (type 82) partition approx twice the size of your ram (partition 6). - next, create a logical linux (type 83) partition using the remainder of the drive (partition 7). This will be mounted as /home. Here's what my drive looks like, according to fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 60801 4883840015 Extended /dev/sda5 1 62 497952 83 Linux /dev/sda6 63 549 3911796 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda7 550 60801 483974158+ 83 Linux Step 2) File system creation... *WARNING* the following script wipes all data on partitions 5, 6, and 7. Use this only when you want to wipe everything, *INCLUDING ALL YOUR DATA*, and start fresh. For mounting the drive after a reboot during install (or booting off the install CD for rescue work) use the script in step 3. #!/bin/bash mke2fs /dev/sda5 mkswap /dev/sda6 mkreiserfs /dev/sda7 swapon /dev/sda6 mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/gentoo -o noatime mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home mount /dev/sda7 /mnt/gentoo/home -o noatime,notail mkdir /mnt/gentoo/opt chmod 1777 /mnt/gentoo/opt mkdir /mnt/gentoo/tmp chmod 1777 /mnt/gentoo/tmp mkdir /mnt/gentoo/usr chmod 755 /mnt/gentoo/usr mkdir /mnt/gentoo/var chmod 755 /mnt/gentoo/var mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/opt chmod 755 /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/opt mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/tmp chmod 1777 /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/tmp mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/usr chmod 755 /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/usr mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/var chmod 755 /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/var mount --bind /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/opt /mnt/gentoo/opt mount --bind /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/tmp /mnt/gentoo/tmp mount --bind /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/usr /mnt/gentoo/usr mount --bind /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/var /mnt/gentoo/var Again, substitute as appropriate if your harddrive is not /dev/sda. Let's examine the script in detail... mke2fs /dev/sda5 mkswap /dev/sda6 mkreiserfs /dev/sda7 swapon /dev/sda6 The first 4 commands format the partitions and activate the swapdrive. Partition 5 really should be ext2fs for a few reasons... - Partition 5 will rarely be written to during normal operation; only when you are installing/updating programs/scripts that reside in /bin or /sbin so journalling isn't that important. - Journalling requires disk space, which we're trying to conserve. - Given the small size of the / partition, ext2fs is sufficient - ext2fs is the easiest filesystem to shrink/grow. If you ever need to grow the / partition in future, you can take space from the swap partition. Unless you're doing a suspend-to-swap, you can screw around with the swap partition with impunity. - partition 7 will require a (preferably journalling) filesystem that can handle a large partition. I currently use reiserfs. There are several competent filesystems. The choice is yours. mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/gentoo -o noatime mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home mount /dev/sda7 /mnt/gentoo/home -o noatime,notail The next 3 statements - mount partition 5 as / - create directory /home on partition 5 - mount partition 7 as /home. All physical partitions are now mounted. mkdir /mnt/gentoo/opt chmod 1777 /mnt/gentoo/opt mkdir /mnt/gentoo/tmp chmod 1777 /mnt/gentoo/tmp mkdir /mnt/gentoo/usr chmod 755 /mnt/gentoo/usr mkdir /mnt/gentoo/var chmod 755 /mnt/gentoo/var The next 6 statements create /opt, /tmp, /usr, and /var, and set permissions. mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/opt chmod 755 /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/opt mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/tmp chmod 1777 /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/tmp mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/usr chmod 755 /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/usr mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home/bindmounts/var chmod 755
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
Alex Schuster writes: Neil Bothwick writes: On Wed, 3 Mar 2010 12:52:55 +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: The data I've seen indicates that ext2 is fastest, that's what I use. I thought the small files of the portage tree especially profit from the notail option in reiserfs? They benefit compared with using reiser with tail-packing. Oh my. I have it the other way around, and never even thought much about what this does. Did you change the block size? I had to change both the block size and blocks per inode, otherwise I would run out of inodes on a 1GB filesystem. You have to admire the user-friendliness of ext! I only wished I could add more inodes after all are out, because this happens quite frequently to me. But yes, it's nice I can specify this at all. There's no need for journalling on the portage tree, it's small enough to fsck quickly and if it does get broken, reformat and resync. Would the journaling overhead be noticeable? I also had used ext2 for my portage tree first, then I read somewhere that reiserfs would be the best. BTW, I have distfiles and pkgdir somewhere else, if not the fsck would not be so fast. It's certainly noticeable compared with ext3. Many benchmarks do show ext2 to be the fastest filesystem, probably because of the lack of journalling overhead. When I saw some, it was maybe 15% difference, and that probably due to writes I assume. The portage tree is written during sync only, and then I do not care about speed. But would accessing lots and lots of small files be slowed down by journaling? Like you, I have $DISTDIR and $PKGDIR elsewhere, those files really should not be mixed in with the portage tree. Just for fun, I just copied my $PORTDIR into my tmpfs, emerge -DpN @system @world takes between 81 and 53 seconds. With reiserfs, I get 130 seconds first ($PORTDIR was unmounted first and mounted again to clear the caches), and 57 seconds in the second attempt. I had expected that tmpfs would be even faster. I think I just keep it the way it is now. The exact same thought occurred to me. With a local tree to sync from, tmpfs seemed a good choice (you could sync it from /etc/conf.d/local) but it seems like it is not worth bothering with. I would need more memory for that, I'm not at amd64 yet. But I probably should migrate anyway, and get another 4GB of memory. I'll try a reiser3 filesystem without tail packing to see if it beats ext2. I backed up my portage tree, re-created the reiserfs partition, and mounted without notail option. The same emerge command now takes about three minutes... no, on 2nd try it's five. Hmm... ah, clementine is indexing files. Why does it do this, I did not change files. Oh, and it has indexed all of my /data/mp3, while I only gave it four subfolders to index. Why does no audio player just accept my choices for what the collection is, and add other stuff? The next test gives 93 seconds, that's nice. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
Alex Schuster writes: Neil Bothwick writes: On Wed, 3 Mar 2010 12:52:55 +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: The data I've seen indicates that ext2 is fastest, that's what I use. I thought the small files of the portage tree especially profit from the notail option in reiserfs? They benefit compared with using reiser with tail-packing. Oh my. I have it the other way around, and never even thought much about what this does. Did you change the block size? I had to change both the block size and blocks per inode, otherwise I would run out of inodes on a 1GB filesystem. You have to admire the user-friendliness of ext! I only wished I could add more inodes after all are out, because this happens quite frequently to me. But yes, it's nice I can specify this at all. There's no need for journalling on the portage tree, it's small enough to fsck quickly and if it does get broken, reformat and resync. Would the journaling overhead be noticeable? I also had used ext2 for my portage tree first, then I read somewhere that reiserfs would be the best. BTW, I have distfiles and pkgdir somewhere else, if not the fsck would not be so fast. It's certainly noticeable compared with ext3. Many benchmarks do show ext2 to be the fastest filesystem, probably because of the lack of journalling overhead. When I saw some, it was maybe 15% difference, and that probably due to writes I assume. The portage tree is written during sync only, and then I do not care about speed. But would accessing lots and lots of small files be slowed down by journaling? Like you, I have $DISTDIR and $PKGDIR elsewhere, those files really should not be mixed in with the portage tree. Just for fun, I just copied my $PORTDIR into my tmpfs, emerge -DpN @system @world takes between 81 and 53 seconds. With reiserfs, I get 130 seconds first ($PORTDIR was unmounted first and mounted again to clear the caches), and 57 seconds in the second attempt. I had expected that tmpfs would be even faster. I think I just keep it the way it is now. The exact same thought occurred to me. With a local tree to sync from, tmpfs seemed a good choice (you could sync it from /etc/conf.d/local) but it seems like it is not worth bothering with. I would need more memory for that, I'm not at amd64 yet. But I probably should migrate anyway, and get another 4GB of memory. I'll try a reiser3 filesystem without tail packing to see if it beats ext2. I backed up my portage tree, re-created the reiserfs partition, and mounted without notail option. The same emerge command now takes about three minutes... no, on 2nd try it's five. Hmm... ah, clementine is indexing files. Why does it do this, I did not change files. Oh, and it has indexed all of my /data/mp3, while I only gave it four subfolders to index. Why does no audio player just accept my choices for what the collection is, and add other stuff? The next test gives 93 seconds, that's nice. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
Argh, sorry for the previous posts. I had some sort of Ctrl-lock, that is, the keyboard acted as if Ctrl was pressed all the time. Now I know that Ctrl+Enter is a shortcut to send an email. I accidentally closed some shells by pressing the D key. I was able to get rid off it by switching to a text console with Alt-F1 (the additional Ctrl key was also not needed) and back. Alex Schuster writes: The next test gives 93 seconds, that's nice. What is not so nice is that emerge -a --depclean took over half an hour of CPU time, needing half a gigabyte of memory. WOW. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
Neil Bothwick writes: On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 10:35:42 +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small cluster size maybe. I think reiserfs with the notail option is recommended. The data I've seen indicates that ext2 is fastest, that's what I use. I thought the small files of the portage tree especially profit from the notail option in reiserfs? Did you change the block size? There's no need for journalling on the portage tree, it's small enough to fsck quickly and if it does get broken, reformat and resync. Would the journaling overhead be noticeable? I also had used ext2 for my portage tree first, then I read somewhere that reiserfs would be the best. BTW, I have distfiles and pkgdir somewhere else, if not the fsck would not be so fast. Just for fun, I just copied my $PORTDIR into my tmpfs, emerge -DpN @system @world takes between 81 and 53 seconds. With reiserfs, I get 130 seconds first ($PORTDIR was unmounted first and mounted again to clear the caches), and 57 seconds in the second attempt. I had expected that tmpfs would be even faster. I think I just keep it the way it is now. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
On Wed, Mar 03, 2010 at 12:52:55PM +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: Neil Bothwick writes: On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 10:35:42 +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small cluster size maybe. I think reiserfs with the notail option is recommended. The data I've seen indicates that ext2 is fastest, that's what I use. I thought the small files of the portage tree especially profit from the notail option in reiserfs? Did you change the block size? You mean the other way around, right? reiser defaults to tail-packing, which can cause problems with GRUB and LILO, which is why notail is an option which turns off tail-packing for those crazy enough to use reiser on /boot. If you use notail on the portage tree, you get rid of that advantage, then Neil is absolutely correct: there's not too much point in journaling the portage tree, and if you actively make reiser not-competitive on the storage-space direction, the only metric left to compare is speed, and ext2 is faster. Incidentally, if you are willing to sacrifice speed for space, then a sparsefile for /usr/portage may also be an option. W -- Willie W. Wong ww...@math.princeton.edu Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire et vice versa ~~~ I. Newton
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
On Wed, 3 Mar 2010 12:52:55 +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: The data I've seen indicates that ext2 is fastest, that's what I use. I thought the small files of the portage tree especially profit from the notail option in reiserfs? They benefit compared with using reiser with tail-packing. Did you change the block size? I had to change both the block size and blocks per inode, otherwise I would run out of inodes on a 1GB filesystem. You have to admire the user-friendliness of ext! There's no need for journalling on the portage tree, it's small enough to fsck quickly and if it does get broken, reformat and resync. Would the journaling overhead be noticeable? I also had used ext2 for my portage tree first, then I read somewhere that reiserfs would be the best. BTW, I have distfiles and pkgdir somewhere else, if not the fsck would not be so fast. It's certainly noticeable compared with ext3. Many benchmarks do show ext2 to be the fastest filesystem, probably because of the lack of journalling overhead. Like you, I have $DISTDIR and $PKGDIR elsewhere, those files really should not be mixed in with the portage tree. Just for fun, I just copied my $PORTDIR into my tmpfs, emerge -DpN @system @world takes between 81 and 53 seconds. With reiserfs, I get 130 seconds first ($PORTDIR was unmounted first and mounted again to clear the caches), and 57 seconds in the second attempt. I had expected that tmpfs would be even faster. I think I just keep it the way it is now. The exact same thought occurred to me. With a local tree to sync from, tmpfs seemed a good choice (you could sync it from /etc/conf.d/local) but it seems like it is not worth bothering with. I'll try a reiser3 filesystem without tail packing to see if it beats ext2. -- Neil Bothwick Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
Neil Bothwick writes: On Wed, 3 Mar 2010 12:52:55 +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: The data I've seen indicates that ext2 is fastest, that's what I use. I thought the small files of the portage tree especially profit from the notail option in reiserfs? They benefit compared with using reiser with tail-packing. Oh my. I have it the other way around, and never even thought much about what this does. Did you change the block size? I had to change both the block size and blocks per inode, otherwise I would run out of inodes on a 1GB filesystem. You have to admire the user-friendliness of ext! I only wished I could add more inodes after all are out, because this happens quite frequently to me. But yes, it's nice I can specify this at all. There's no need for journalling on the portage tree, it's small enough to fsck quickly and if it does get broken, reformat and resync. Would the journaling overhead be noticeable? I also had used ext2 for my portage tree first, then I read somewhere that reiserfs would be the best. BTW, I have distfiles and pkgdir somewhere else, if not the fsck would not be so fast. It's certainly noticeable compared with ext3. Many benchmarks do show ext2 to be the fastest filesystem, probably because of the lack of journalling overhead. When I saw some, it was maybe 15% difference, and that probably due to writes I assume. The portage tree is written during sync only, and then I do not care about speed. But would accessing lots and lots of small files be slowed down by journaling? Like you, I have $DISTDIR and $PKGDIR elsewhere, those files really should not be mixed in with the portage tree. Just for fun, I just copied my $PORTDIR into my tmpfs, emerge -DpN @system @world takes between 81 and 53 seconds. With reiserfs, I get 130 seconds first ($PORTDIR was unmounted first and mounted again to clear the caches), and 57 seconds in the second attempt. I had expected that tmpfs would be even faster. I think I just keep it the way it is now. The exact same thought occurred to me. With a local tree to sync from, tmpfs seemed a good choice (you could sync it from /etc/conf.d/local) but it seems like it is not worth bothering with. I would need more memory for that, I'm not at amd64 yet. But I probably should migrate anyway, and get another 4GB of memory. I'll try a reiser3 filesystem without tail packing to see if it beats ext2. I backed up my portage tree, re-created the reiserfs partition, and mounted without notail option. The same emerge command now takes about three minutes... no, on 2nd try it's five. Hmm... ah, clementine is indexing files. Why does it do this, I did not change files. Oh, and it has indexed all of my /data/mp3, while I only gave it four subfolders to index. Why does no audio player just accept my choices for what the collection is, and add other stuff? The next test gives 93 seconds, that's nice. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
Willie Wong writes: On Wed, Mar 03, 2010 at 12:52:55PM +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: I thought the small files of the portage tree especially profit from the notail option in reiserfs? Did you change the block size? You mean the other way around, right? Oh dear. Yes. Thanks. reiser defaults to tail-packing, which can cause problems with GRUB and LILO, which is why notail is an option which turns off tail-packing for those crazy enough to use reiser on /boot. If you use notail on the portage tree, you get rid of that advantage, then Neil is absolutely correct: there's not too much point in journaling the portage tree, and if you actively make reiser not-competitive on the storage-space direction, the only metric left to compare is speed, and ext2 is faster. Incidentally, if you are willing to sacrifice speed for space, then a sparsefile for /usr/portage may also be an option. I had this once on a smaller machine, but now I'd prefer it the other way around, there's plenty of space available. I have 15G for distfiles and pkgdir, so I don't worry about some 100MB for the portage tree. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
Paul Hartman writes: - utilizing device labels and/or volume labels instead of hoping /dev/sda stays /dev/sda always Good idea. Or use LVM. - better partitioning scheme than my current root, boot, home (need portage on its own, maybe /var as well?) I like to have many partitions. When my /usr/portage/distfiles or /tmp gets full, I do not want this to affect my system. - some kind of small linux emergency/recovery partition? equivalent to a liveCD maybe. Maybe, but a liveCD is also fine and can be used elsewhere, too. - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small cluster size maybe. I think reiserfs with the notail option is recommended. - omit/reduce number of reserved-for-root blocks on partitions where it's not necessary. I reduce it for large partitions, but do not set it to 0 in order to prevent fragmentation. - I have never used LVM and don't really know about it. Should I use it? will it make life easier someday? or more difficult? A little more difficult in the first place, until you get used to it. But if you need to change things later, it makes this much easier. /var is too small? Well, enter lvresize -L +1G /dev/myvg/var resize2fs /dev/myvg/var and you have 1G more of space after half a minute. No need to take the system down, boot a rescue system and use parted. Short how-to: - create some partitions you will use for LVM (/dev/sda[56789]) - make them physical volumes: pvcreate /dev/sda[56789] - make them a volume group: vgcreate myvg /dev/sda[56789] - create logical volumes: lvcreate -L 5G -n usr myvg (/usr partition) - create file system: mke2fs -j -L usr /dev/myvg/usr - Is RAID5 still a good balance for disk cost vs usable space vs data safety? I can't/don't want to pay for full mirroring of all disks. Probably, if you need RAID. But I'd say RAID is not a real backup, so you would need even more disks space for that. I prefer to use a 2nd disk for backups I make frequently with rdiff-backup. They have the same structure as the original, only that each partition has an additional 'rdiff-backup- data' directory that stores the data of older snapshots. Some months ago my main drive started having errors, so I took it out, booted with a CD, renamed the volume group of the backup disk to that of the original one (vgrename backup system), and that was all. Using RAID would have been even easier, but does not help when I accidentally remove a file, or want a file as it was a whiel ago. Keeping the older snapshots needs some extra space, but this is compensated by not having to backup everything including /usr/portage/distfiles, /var/tmp/portage etc. Wonko
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 10:35:42 +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small cluster size maybe. I think reiserfs with the notail option is recommended. The data I've seen indicates that ext2 is fastest, that's what I use. There's no need for journalling on the portage tree, it's small enough to fsck quickly and if it does get broken, reformat and resync. -- Neil Bothwick New Intel opcode #007 PUKE: Put unmeaningful keywords everywhere signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
On 2 March 2010 10:10, Neil Bothwick n...@digimed.co.uk wrote: On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 10:35:42 +0100, Alex Schuster wrote: - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small cluster size maybe. I think reiserfs with the notail option is recommended. The data I've seen indicates that ext2 is fastest, that's what I use. There's no need for journalling on the portage tree, it's small enough to fsck quickly and if it does get broken, reformat and resync. Over the years I've had /usr/portage on reiserfs (with tails and all) and xfs on laptops. New machine has reiser4. Seems blindingly fast, but that's no comparison because the machine is more modern. -- Regards, Mick
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
Am Freitag 26 Februar 2010 schrieb Paul Hartman: Hi, I'm building a new personal computer. I respect the opinion and experience of the people on this list and am interested in anyone's advice on the best way to set up my new Gentoo installation. Things that you say I wish I set mine up this way the first time... or have learned from experience how to do it right the first time already. :) Some topics I'm thinking about (comments welcome): - be aware of cylinder boundaries when partitioning (thanks to the recent thread) Indeed. ;-) I just applied that knowledge again yesterday on a friend’s new laptop. - better partitioning scheme than my current root, boot, home (need portage on its own, maybe /var as well?) I use the root/boot/home scheme as well (500GB laptop drive). Though I used ReiserFS in an image file on / file system for a while, but dropped it later. Using an image file saves from fiddling with partitions and FS resizing in the process. - some kind of small linux emergency/recovery partition? equivalent to a liveCD maybe. I always wanted to make my own Gentoo-based livecd that fits onto my old 128M stick. :o) - SSD vs 1rpm vs big-and-cheap hard drive for rootfs/system files. I lean toward the latter since RAM caches it anyway. I’m still caucios about SSDs because of their limited lifetime. I would only use it for /home or my media archive. But for the latter, it would become over-expensive fast, for they are more pricey by the GB than all other things. If it shall be a quiet system, I’d look into 2,5 drives, they also use less power than 3,5, on the other hand they are of course more expensive. :) - omit/reduce number of reserved-for-root blocks on partitions where it's not necessary. I’ve set it to 0 on my home partition. I also reduced the inode count on my media, home and X-Plane partition. None of those have more than 6 in use at the moment, whereas mkfs had given them about 3 to 4 million by default. I’m not sure though if that gives me any more available space. -- Gruß | Greetings | Qapla' This sentence no verb. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
Hi, I'm building a new personal computer. I respect the opinion and experience of the people on this list and am interested in anyone's advice on the best way to set up my new Gentoo installation. Things that you say I wish I set mine up this way the first time... or have learned from experience how to do it right the first time already. :) Some topics I'm thinking about (comments welcome): - be aware of cylinder boundaries when partitioning (thanks to the recent thread) - utilizing device labels and/or volume labels instead of hoping /dev/sda stays /dev/sda always - initrd - I've never used one, but maybe it's needed if root is on software RAID? - grub/kernel parameter tips and tricks... i'm already using uvesafb, and don't dual-boot with MSWin or anything, just Gentoo - better partitioning scheme than my current root, boot, home (need portage on its own, maybe /var as well?) - some kind of small linux emergency/recovery partition? equivalent to a liveCD maybe. - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small cluster size maybe. - SSD vs 1rpm vs big-and-cheap hard drive for rootfs/system files. I lean toward the latter since RAM caches it anyway. - omit/reduce number of reserved-for-root blocks on partitions where it's not necessary. - I have never used LVM and don't really know about it. Should I use it? will it make life easier someday? or more difficult? - Is RAID5 still a good balance for disk cost vs usable space vs data safety? I can't/don't want to pay for full mirroring of all disks. Or any other tips that apply to things which are difficult to change once the system is in use. It will be ~amd64 Gentoo using Intel Core i7 920 with 12GiB RAM. No disks have been purchased yet. Thanks
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
- be aware of cylinder boundaries when partitioning (thanks to the recent thread) +1 - utilizing device labels and/or volume labels instead of hoping /dev/sda stays /dev/sda always +1 - initrd - I've never used one, but maybe it's needed if root is on software RAID? It's not technically needed and boot times are faster without them. I'm a fan of statically compiled kernels too but that's more to prevent malicious LKMs. - grub/kernel parameter tips and tricks... i'm already using uvesafb, and don't dual-boot with MSWin or anything, just Gentoo - better partitioning scheme than my current root, boot, home (need portage on its own, maybe /var as well?) putting portage on it's on partition is a good idea imo, I usually use reiserfs because it handles large amounts of small files well. - some kind of small linux emergency/recovery partition? equivalent to a liveCD maybe. I usually keep a bootable usb in my bag for recovery, which also works if there is a problem with the disk/raid. - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small cluster size maybe. reiserfs - SSD vs 1rpm vs big-and-cheap hard drive for rootfs/system files. I lean toward the latter since RAM caches it anyway. SSDs can make things snappier for boot times. Having lots of ram for disk cache eliminates the benefit after booted since ram is even faster than a SSD. - omit/reduce number of reserved-for-root blocks on partitions where it's not necessary. I never get close to filling my disks so never have bothered with this - I have never used LVM and don't really know about it. Should I use it? will it make life easier someday? or more difficult? I'm not a fan, if you don't plan on changing your partition sizes I don't see a lot of utility in adding the extra layer of complexity. - Is RAID5 still a good balance for disk cost vs usable space vs data safety? I can't/don't want to pay for full mirroring of all disks. It's better than no raid but as you probably know it will only allow for a single disk failure. Getting drives from different lots (but same geometry) is recommended. -- Kyle
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 11:54:13AM -0600, Paul Hartman wrote: - better partitioning scheme than my current root, boot, home (need portage on its own, maybe /var as well?) /var if you are worried about log files piling up. I don't put portage on its own, but I use reiserfs for / - some kind of small linux emergency/recovery partition? equivalent to a liveCD maybe. Isn't that what busybox is for? - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small cluster size maybe. Reiserfs. That's more because of the tail-packing then anything else. - omit/reduce number of reserved-for-root blocks on partitions where it's not necessary. Yep. On a 200G drive, 10% is 20G: that's 4 movies! Or any other tips that apply to things which are difficult to change once the system is in use. Pay attention to your make.conf? Make sure you get CHOST right. If you are dealing with unfamiliar options in the kernel, always start at the bare minimum and make sure you keep a working copy around. W -- Willie W. Wong ww...@math.princeton.edu Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire et vice versa ~~~ I. Newton
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
- Original Message From: Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Some topics I'm thinking about (comments welcome): - be aware of cylinder boundaries when partitioning (thanks to the recent thread) - utilizing device labels and/or volume labels instead of hoping /dev/sda stays /dev/sda always I've never had an issue with /dev/sda changing, but I don't change out hard drives a lot either. If you're doing hot-pluggable systems may be. But it typically does the right thing. I haven't gotten around to do doing it yet, but one thing I did think about was setting up udev to recognize certain external hard drives for use - e.g. always mapping a backup hard drive to a certain location for backups instead of the normal prompting. - initrd - I've never used one, but maybe it's needed if root is on software RAID? You only need initrd if you can't build a kernel with everything needed to boot up - namely, when you need to load specialized firmware to access the hard drive or if you are doing net-booting. - grub/kernel parameter tips and tricks... i'm already using uvesafb, and don't dual-boot with MSWin or anything, just Gentoo I typically make sure to alias or map a default that should always work. It's my standard boot up unless Im testing out a new kernel build. When I do an update, I add the update to the list without modifying the default until I've verified that the updated kernel is working. Works better under LILO than grub if I recall. - better partitioning scheme than my current root, boot, home (need portage on its own, maybe /var as well?) I have taken to putting portage on its own partition to keep from filling up the root partition, which I've done on a few systems more than once. So yes, definately +5. - best filesystem for portage? something compressed or with small cluster size maybe. 1. Stay away from reiserfs. Yeah, I know there's a big fan base for it; but it's not so big in the recovery distro area. 2. Ext2/3 are now more than sufficient and supported out-of-the-box by nearly all recovery distros. I haven't tried Ext4 yet, but it seems very able as well. From various things I've seen, XFS or JFS is about the only real FS to offer benefits where it kind of makes sense. But for the most part, Ext2/3/4 will probably more than suffice for most everyone's need; and when it doesn't - you're typically doing something where you need to find the right one out of numerous for a specialized area of use, in which case, general recommendations don't cut it. (Why care about recovery disks: B/c you never know when you're going to need to access that partition.) - SSD vs 1rpm vs big-and-cheap hard drive for rootfs/system files. I lean toward the latter since RAM caches it anyway. I lean towards just going the standard 10k hard drives with lots of cache; though I typically only buy the middle-line Western Digitals (upper-line being the server hard drives). - omit/reduce number of reserved-for-root blocks on partitions where it's not necessary. - I have never used LVM and don't really know about it. Should I use it? will it make life easier someday? or more difficult? I tried out LVM (LVM2) thinking it would kind of make sense. I still have one system using it; but I ended up abandoning it. Why? Recovery is a pita when something goes wrong. Not to say it isn't flexible, but for most people LVM is unnecessary, kind of like RAID. - Is RAID5 still a good balance for disk cost vs usable space vs data safety? I can't/don't want to pay for full mirroring of all disks. RAID is not really necessary for most people. Save it for sections on doing backups - e.g. setting up a drive to backup to that gets mirrored off - or server support, where RAID is necessary. But most users don't need RAID. Or any other tips that apply to things which are difficult to change once the system is in use. KISS. Ben
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice/best practices for a new Gentoo installation
Paul Hartman wrote: - some kind of small linux emergency/recovery partition? equivalent to a liveCD maybe. Tiny core linux on the boot folder/part. Its all in a single small file. Or any other tips that apply to things which are difficult to change once the system is in use. I moved distfiles onto my home partition (bacause its huge), my root fs is 5GB ext3, it never really changes much. -- Regards, Roundyz
