Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
On Friday 21 December 2007 18:46:52 Mick wrote: The problem with some distros installation scripts is that they are trying to be too clever for their own good. As a result they some times behave like MS Windows and unless you whip them into submission they could trash your system! Exactly the cause of my nervousness. What I always do is to create the partitions and LV that I want and then instruct the distro in question to install itself in there. Of course if the distro in question does not have an LVM compatible kernel then you'll need to install it using a different medium (with a kernel that has all the necessary drivers) and untar the distro's fs into your partitions of choice. So much simpler just to manage my own partitions. Good for the confidence, too, not to mention the feeling of knowing what's going on. The rest of the world will no doubt continue to keep up with all the latest developments, but in this respect I prefer to remain a dinosaur. (They did, after all, rule the world for hundreds of millions of years, even if they're not still around today - thousands of times longer than we can yet claim.) -- Rgds Peter -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
Am Donnerstag, 20. Dezember 2007 schrieb Benjamen R. Meyer: I don't like using NFS much...guess I'll have to change that as I would like to centralize my server as a one-stop shop for usernames and passwords for the few systems on my network - server, desktop, and a laptop at present, but there will also be a few others shortly too. The laptop runs Windows 2k, so it'll just auth against Samba...any how...to get back to this issue... Did you think about using OpenAFS? I haven't played with LVM yet. It's been something that's intrigued me, but I haven't ever researched it much to play with it. What you guys propose above and in this thread is quite interesting, so I'll follow up with this question: Right now I have the server configured per drives as follows: /dev/hda1 / 3.8 GB 4096.19 MB /dev/hda2 /home 15.0 GB 15356.60 MB /dev/hda3 SWAP 2.6 GB 2665.00 MB /dev/hda4 /usr/local 4.9 GB 5255.96 MB /dev/hdb1 EMPTY 66.3 GB 67875.02 MB /dev/hdb2 /var/tmp28.0 GB 30721.43 MB /dev/hdb3 /usr/portage47.0 GB 51202.37 MB /dev/hdb4 SWAP10.0 GB 10240.48 MB Having the output of df would help a lot, because it shows how much space is already occupied on each filesystem. What about /usr/portage? If you have a broadband internet connection you don't need to care about it. It's only got a 192 MB of RAM - a PII/233, so I'm giving it generous swap space. (My desktop is an AMD64 with a gig of RAM.) I seem to have a sizable partition free (hdb1), so this just might work - but how would you guys propose I transition from the above setup to an LVM setup? All partitions are currently ext3 (my preferred fs for linux). Hmm, looks like hdb1 has enough space for all of hda. So you could just boot into a rescue CD (my recommendation: GRML), copy the stuff over, eventually revise fstab on hdb1 and boot from this partition (to make sure everything still wortks as before), then boot back into GRML and repartition hda and create logical volumes (as per my first reply), copy the stuff back, together with the remaining stuff from hdb, then repartition hdb and add it to the volume group. If you want a more detailed description of the steps above, you can mail me directly. Bye... Dirk signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
On Dec 20, 2007 10:31 PM, Mick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Unlike commonly perceived wisdom I don't think that LVM is a panacea for all ills, or a necessity as such. It is however bloody convenient, especially on a growing fs. A server that is not expected to change much in size, probably does not need it. On the other hand some servers (file, mail, news servers) are bound to continue to accumulate data and their fs will increase in time. I would argue that the former type of server can happily live in a few primary partitions + 1 extended with a number of logical partitions, if you are going for a multi-partitioned scheme, while the latter type of server will greatly benefit from LVM. Of course, if hard drive redundancy is necessary, then I can't see how you could live without LVM + RAID. I understand you on LVM is not a must for very stable servers, but since I can't see any good reason not to use LVM, I see no reason to limit your abilities to extended partitions. We have the opportunity to be more flexible with LVM, why should we not get it ? To loose the ability to extend a partition by adding a new HD without any pain ? I mean, if you don't know how to use it, I understand that you may skip installing a LVM system, but when you did it once, I see no reason to install your new systems without. So, I am interested in your advice about LVM is not the universal solution for partitions management, since I am sure I have something to learn from you experience. Gal' -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
Galevsky wrote: On Dec 20, 2007 10:31 PM, Mick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Unlike commonly perceived wisdom I don't think that LVM is a panacea for all ills, or a necessity as such. It is however bloody convenient, especially on a growing fs. A server that is not expected to change much in size, probably does not need it. On the other hand some servers (file, mail, news servers) are bound to continue to accumulate data and their fs will increase in time. I would argue that the former type of server can happily live in a few primary partitions + 1 extended with a number of logical partitions, if you are going for a multi-partitioned scheme, while the latter type of server will greatly benefit from LVM. Of course, if hard drive redundancy is necessary, then I can't see how you could live without LVM + RAID. I understand you on LVM is not a must for very stable servers, but since I can't see any good reason not to use LVM, I see no reason to limit your abilities to extended partitions. We have the opportunity to be more flexible with LVM, why should we not get it ? To loose the ability to extend a partition by adding a new HD without any pain ? I mean, if you don't know how to use it, I understand that you may skip installing a LVM system, but when you did it once, I see no reason to install your new systems without. So, I am interested in your advice about LVM is not the universal solution for partitions management, since I am sure I have something to learn from you experience. Agreed. As I said in another e-mail on the list, I use to use extended partitions - at one point I had about 10 or so partitions on a single drive (3 primary, the rest from an extended partition). This worked well under Windows 9x, but was a pain after moving to Linux. It wasn't that I had mis-scoped the size of the data for those partitions, just that my needs changed (mainly user related needs, not system related needs), and managing extended partitions is a lot of work. I very much understand LVM and what would do for me, and would very much like to hear why simple extended partitions would be better for any scenario but the most limited of scenarios where LVM was just not possible (e.g. the system could not run a kernel that supported LVM; or RAM on the system was too limited to support running LVM; etc.)...I'm not sure I agree that they would be. Ben -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
On Friday 21 December 2007 10:00:40 Galevsky wrote: I am interested in your advice [that] LVM is not the universal solution for partition management, In the case under discussion, namely a stable server, I wouldn't challenge any advice to use LVM, but I was using it until recently on this semi-experimental desktop box and found I was getting too nervous for comfort. From time to time I would be tempted to give another distribution a spin, and every time I did it was unable to recognise my existing partitions (and therefore leave them alone). The same was true of a couple of rescue CDs I tried - which of course meant I couldn't use them. That isn't a problem now, not since I installed a small rescue system on a spare disk in the same box. So, for an unchanging system setup, by all means use LVM; for toy boxes it seems to me not to offer much advantage. Incidentally, I have 4 GB RAM in this dual-246 box, so I've put /tmp into a tmpfs, which greatly speeds emerges. This is from /etc/fstab: tmpfs /tmptmpfs nodev,nosuid,size=6g0 0 and this is from /etc/make.conf: BUILD_PREFIX=/tmp/portage/build PKG_TMPDIR=/tmp PORTAGE_TMPDIR=/tmp PORTAGE_TMPFS=/dev/shm The disks get a holiday (except when compiling Open Office) :-) -- Rgds Peter -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
On Friday 21 December 2007, Benjamen R. Meyer wrote: Galevsky wrote: On Dec 20, 2007 10:31 PM, Mick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Unlike commonly perceived wisdom I don't think that LVM is a panacea for all ills, or a necessity as such. It is however bloody convenient, especially on a growing fs. A server that is not expected to change much in size, probably does not need it. On the other hand some servers (file, mail, news servers) are bound to continue to accumulate data and their fs will increase in time. I would argue that the former type of server can happily live in a few primary partitions + 1 extended with a number of logical partitions, if you are going for a multi-partitioned scheme, while the latter type of server will greatly benefit from LVM. Of course, if hard drive redundancy is necessary, then I can't see how you could live without LVM + RAID. I understand you on LVM is not a must for very stable servers, but since I can't see any good reason not to use LVM, I see no reason to limit your abilities to extended partitions. We have the opportunity to be more flexible with LVM, why should we not get it ? To loose the ability to extend a partition by adding a new HD without any pain ? I mean, if you don't know how to use it, I understand that you may skip installing a LVM system, but when you did it once, I see no reason to install your new systems without. So, I am interested in your advice about LVM is not the universal solution for partitions management, since I am sure I have something to learn from you experience. Agreed. As I said in another e-mail on the list, I use to use extended partitions - at one point I had about 10 or so partitions on a single drive (3 primary, the rest from an extended partition). This worked well under Windows 9x, but was a pain after moving to Linux. It wasn't that I had mis-scoped the size of the data for those partitions, just that my needs changed (mainly user related needs, not system related needs), and managing extended partitions is a lot of work. I very much understand LVM and what would do for me, and would very much like to hear why simple extended partitions would be better for any scenario but the most limited of scenarios where LVM was just not possible (e.g. the system could not run a kernel that supported LVM; or RAM on the system was too limited to support running LVM; etc.)...I'm not sure I agree that they would be. Guys, mine is not any precious experience that you could learn much from (I am sure others on this list have more valuable experience on this matter), but what I am saying is this: If you have a stable, dedicated server which is NOT going to increase in fs size requirements, then a conventional non-LVM installation will do exactly what you need done, in a simpler fashion. To define simpler in a server use case, I would say that anything that you do not absolutely need should not be installed (for basic security and maintainability reasons), including LVM kernel modules and what not. On the other hand, installing and maintaining an LVM based fs is clearly not difficult and if you are uncertain about your current/future fs size requirements, then you're better off installing LVM and making use of the flexibility it offers. BTW, if you're thinking of the flexibility of adding drives/partitions and extending LVG's at will, you should also consider that unless you're running a mirror RAID when any-one of your drives goes bang! you will lose all your VG data irrespective on which drive (PV) they reside. Of course, you know this and you keep recent back ups of your data at all times, right? ;-) I can recall at least 4 server installations where I did not run LVM and I never had to increase the fs size (one of them has been running for more than 3 years now and it fs is spread over two drives). On the other hand a server I built less than two months ago has LVM and all data (but not its / ) is stored in LVs. I already had to replace a drive on that machine which was suspect for an imminent failure. A case of horses for courses. Just my 2c's. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
On Friday 21 December 2007, Peter Humphrey wrote: On Friday 21 December 2007 10:00:40 Galevsky wrote: I am interested in your advice [that] LVM is not the universal solution for partition management, In the case under discussion, namely a stable server, I wouldn't challenge any advice to use LVM, but I was using it until recently on this semi-experimental desktop box and found I was getting too nervous for comfort. From time to time I would be tempted to give another distribution a spin, and every time I did it was unable to recognise my existing partitions (and therefore leave them alone). The same was true of a couple of rescue CDs I tried - which of course meant I couldn't use them. The problem with some distros installation scripts is that they are trying to be too clever for their own good. As a result they some times behave like MS Windows and unless you whip them into submission they could trash your system! What I always do is to create the partitions and LV that I want and then instruct the distro in question to install itself in there. Of course if the distro in question does not have an LVM compatible kernel then you'll need to install it using a different medium (with a kernel that has all the necessary drivers) and untar the distro's fs into your partitions of choice. That isn't a problem now, not since I installed a small rescue system on a spare disk in the same box. So, for an unchanging system setup, by all means use LVM; for toy boxes it seems to me not to offer much advantage. Incidentally, I have 4 GB RAM in this dual-246 box, so I've put /tmp into a tmpfs, which greatly speeds emerges. This is from /etc/fstab: tmpfs /tmptmpfs nodev,nosuid,size=6g0 0 and this is from /etc/make.conf: BUILD_PREFIX=/tmp/portage/build PKG_TMPDIR=/tmp PORTAGE_TMPDIR=/tmp PORTAGE_TMPFS=/dev/shm The disks get a holiday (except when compiling Open Office) :-) -- Rgds Peter -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
Benjamen R. Meyer wrote: I set up a server system a little while ago, and in performing updates to portage it ran out of disk space as I didn't quite allow enough space on the root partition (3.8 GB). As a result, I took a partition that I had cleaned up (this was from a rebuild of a system that was a different distro in the past) and moved over /usr/portage to it. It's a 47 GB partition (as reported by df -h) and the system works fine. I do realize that if the mount command got screwed up, I'd probably have issues recovering the system, but that is that system. I am now thinking of converting my desktop over to Gentoo as well, and was wondering whether what I did above on the server was wise or not. I will be using the server as the portage provider for my desktop too. Otherwise, what is the recommended space to have available for the portage tree in /usr/portage so I can have root as an appropriately sized partition? I'd recommend having a read of: http://www.freebsd-howto.com/HOWTO/Filesystem-Layout-HOWTO Now, although its a Freebsd resource, the ideas apply equally well to Linux (or UNIX for that matter - though you can skip where it discusses Freebsd partition and slice naming). In particular it discusses why separating /, /usr, /var, /tmp, /home is well worth doing - even tho it wasts a bit of space! I used build systems with / including /usr and /var but these days I do not make these part of / (for reasons covered in the article). The downside is you end up with a lot of partitions and filesystems to figure out how to size - but you can use LVM make it a bit more forgiving if you need to resize them. Cheers Mark -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
[gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
I set up a server system a little while ago, and in performing updates to portage it ran out of disk space as I didn't quite allow enough space on the root partition (3.8 GB). As a result, I took a partition that I had cleaned up (this was from a rebuild of a system that was a different distro in the past) and moved over /usr/portage to it. It's a 47 GB partition (as reported by df -h) and the system works fine. I do realize that if the mount command got screwed up, I'd probably have issues recovering the system, but that is that system. I am now thinking of converting my desktop over to Gentoo as well, and was wondering whether what I did above on the server was wise or not. I will be using the server as the portage provider for my desktop too. Otherwise, what is the recommended space to have available for the portage tree in /usr/portage so I can have root as an appropriately sized partition? TIA, Ben -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
I won't answer you with a size since its mainly depends on your own needs, but don't you know that solutions like lvm or evms provide lots of flexibility to manage your HD resources ? I advise you to look at lvm howto. It allows you to add/remove/move/enlarge your partitions as you need in a truly painless way. To avoid major mounting problems (can be done but with caution), let /boot and / outside lvm, and put the others in logical volumes. Gal' On Dec 20, 2007 10:50 AM, Benjamen R. Meyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I set up a server system a little while ago, and in performing updates to portage it ran out of disk space as I didn't quite allow enough space on the root partition (3.8 GB). As a result, I took a partition that I had cleaned up (this was from a rebuild of a system that was a different distro in the past) and moved over /usr/portage to it. It's a 47 GB partition (as reported by df -h) and the system works fine. I do realize that if the mount command got screwed up, I'd probably have issues recovering the system, but that is that system. I am now thinking of converting my desktop over to Gentoo as well, and was wondering whether what I did above on the server was wise or not. I will be using the server as the portage provider for my desktop too. Otherwise, what is the recommended space to have available for the portage tree in /usr/portage so I can have root as an appropriately sized partition? TIA, Ben -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
On Thursday 20 December 2007 10:50:33 Benjamen R. Meyer wrote: I set up a server system a little while ago, and in performing updates to portage it ran out of disk space as I didn't quite allow enough space on the root partition (3.8 GB). That's way too much. 256M is enough. As a result, I took a partition that I had cleaned up (this was from a rebuild of a system that was a different distro in the past) and moved over /usr/portage to it. It's a 47 GB partition (as reported by df -h) and the system works fine. I do realize that if the mount command got screwed up, I'd probably have issues recovering the system, but that is that system. I am now thinking of converting my desktop over to Gentoo as well, and was wondering whether what I did above on the server was wise or not. I think it is not. You'll undoubtedly get different answers about this, but IMHO it is best (regardless what kind of system) to use small, special purpose logical volumes. This way you can add space when needed, use the filesystem that fits best for the kind of data you store on this volume and have a certain degree of safety against volume corruption. Here is what I would recommend for a normal linux system: [hs]da1: /boot, 64M, ext2 [hs]da2: /, 256M, ext3 or xfs [hs]da3: LVM Then, create a volume group spawning [hs]da3 with name vg00 (you can choose the name freely) and create logical volumes inside: /dev/vg00/swap: size as needed, swapfs # can be omitted if enough RAM /dev/vg00/usr: /usr, 2-5G (dep. on number of pkgs), ext3 or xfs /dev/vg00/var: /var, 512M-1G, ext3 or xfs For /home, I prefer to have one LV per user, like /dev/vg00/john_doe, /dev/vg00/jane_doe and have the kernel automounter mount them on demand (at login time). I will be using the server as the portage provider for my desktop too. Otherwise, what is the recommended space to have available for the portage tree in /usr/portage so I can have root as an appropriately sized partition? Here again, I use the kernel automounter to mount three different LVs under /gentoo when needed: /dev/vg00/build (5.5G to be able to build OO.org), /dev/vg00/distfiles for the source packages and /dev/vg00/overlays for overlays, incl. the portage tree. On the desktop machine, you should be able to mount distfiles and overlays from the server via NFS. The build volume I would leave locally on the desktop to get faster build times (unless your network connection to your server is faster than harddisc access). HTH... Dirk
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:12:17 +0100, Dirk Heinrichs wrote: Then, create a volume group spawning [hs]da3 with name vg00 (you can choose the name freely) and create logical volumes inside: I'd use a less generic name, otherwise you'll have problems if the computer fails and you try to connect the disk to another computer that has a vg00 volume group. I generally use a name related to the computer's hostname, which avoids conflicts. -- Neil Bothwick .sig a .sog of sixpence. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:50:33 + Benjamen R. Meyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I set up a server system a little while ago, and in performing updates to portage it ran out of disk space as I didn't quite allow enough space on the root partition (3.8 GB). As a result, I took a partition that I had cleaned up (this was from a rebuild of a system that was a different distro in the past) and moved over /usr/portage to it. It's a 47 GB partition (as reported by df -h) and the system works fine. 47 Gigs is quite a lot of space for the portage tree. The ebuilds take up a few hundred megabytes, and the distfiles generally fill up a few gigs by the time you get everything installed (i recommend you keep them around, if you plan to share portage with others). The amount of space you provide is overkill -- but more importantly, I worry that you may need to reclaim some of that 47GB to use for your root partition, as 3.8GB isn't a particularly large amount for this, especially if you have /var on that partition as well. I generally go 5 or 10 gigs for a root partition, the latter being more appropriate for a general purpose graphical workstation. My shared portage tree has been deployed for quite a while now and is about 5.4 gigs, with roughly 5G of that accounted for by distfiles. I am now thinking of converting my desktop over to Gentoo as well, and was wondering whether what I did above on the server was wise or not. I will be using the server as the portage provider for my desktop too. Otherwise, what is the recommended space to have available for the portage tree in /usr/portage so I can have root as an appropriately sized partition? I believe that sharing portage between computers is wise whenever the client is guaranteed to have access to the tree when new programs are required. In other words, it works great for desktops. The configuration might come back to haunt you if you are off your own network and need to install a new program on your laptop. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
Dirk Heinrichs wrote: On Thursday 20 December 2007 10:50:33 Benjamen R. Meyer wrote: I set up a server system a little while ago, and in performing updates to portage it ran out of disk space as I didn't quite allow enough space on the root partition (3.8 GB). That's way too much. 256M is enough. / is the primary drive for the OS; I typically only off-load to other partitions for user stuff. On the server, I initially only offloaded /home and /usr/local; but in the crisis of the out of diskspace issue, I ended up also offloading /var/tmp and /usr/portage. As a result, I took a partition that I had cleaned up (this was from a rebuild of a system that was a different distro in the past) and moved over /usr/portage to it. It's a 47 GB partition (as reported by df -h) and the system works fine. I do realize that if the mount command got screwed up, I'd probably have issues recovering the system, but that is that system. I am now thinking of converting my desktop over to Gentoo as well, and was wondering whether what I did above on the server was wise or not. I think it is not. You'll undoubtedly get different answers about this, but IMHO it is best (regardless what kind of system) to use small, special purpose logical volumes. This way you can add space when needed, use the filesystem that fits best for the kind of data you store on this volume and have a certain degree of safety against volume corruption. Here is what I would recommend for a normal linux system: [hs]da1: /boot, 64M, ext2 [hs]da2: /, 256M, ext3 or xfs [hs]da3: LVM Then, create a volume group spawning [hs]da3 with name vg00 (you can choose the name freely) and create logical volumes inside: /dev/vg00/swap: size as needed, swapfs # can be omitted if enough RAM /dev/vg00/usr: /usr, 2-5G (dep. on number of pkgs), ext3 or xfs /dev/vg00/var: /var, 512M-1G, ext3 or xfs For /home, I prefer to have one LV per user, like /dev/vg00/john_doe, /dev/vg00/jane_doe and have the kernel automounter mount them on demand (at login time). I will be using the server as the portage provider for my desktop too. Otherwise, what is the recommended space to have available for the portage tree in /usr/portage so I can have root as an appropriately sized partition? Here again, I use the kernel automounter to mount three different LVs under /gentoo when needed: /dev/vg00/build (5.5G to be able to build OO.org), /dev/vg00/distfiles for the source packages and /dev/vg00/overlays for overlays, incl. the portage tree. On the desktop machine, you should be able to mount distfiles and overlays from the server via NFS. The build volume I would leave locally on the desktop to get faster build times (unless your network connection to your server is faster than harddisc access). I don't like using NFS much...guess I'll have to change that as I would like to centralize my server as a one-stop shop for usernames and passwords for the few systems on my network - server, desktop, and a laptop at present, but there will also be a few others shortly too. The laptop runs Windows 2k, so it'll just auth against Samba...any how...to get back to this issue... I haven't played with LVM yet. It's been something that's intrigued me, but I haven't ever researched it much to play with it. What you guys propose above and in this thread is quite interesting, so I'll follow up with this question: Right now I have the server configured per drives as follows: /dev/hda1 /3.8 GB 4096.19 MB /dev/hda2 /home 15.0 GB 15356.60 MB /dev/hda3 SWAP 2.6 GB 2665.00 MB /dev/hda4 /usr/local 4.9 GB 5255.96 MB /dev/hdb1 EMPTY 66.3 GB 67875.02 MB /dev/hdb2 /var/tmp28.0 GB 30721.43 MB /dev/hdb3 /usr/portage47.0 GB 51202.37 MB /dev/hdb4 SWAP10.0 GB 10240.48 MB It's only got a 192 MB of RAM - a PII/233, so I'm giving it generous swap space. (My desktop is an AMD64 with a gig of RAM.) I seem to have a sizable partition free (hdb1), so this just might work - but how would you guys propose I transition from the above setup to an LVM setup? All partitions are currently ext3 (my preferred fs for linux). I don't think I'd be able to do that on my desktop right now...namely in that rebuilding it from Slackware to Gentoo is going to be trying enough, but I think I can manage it - namely from the side of downtime, but I'd also like to try to fully utilize the AMD64 in the system - meaning 64-bit where possible. Any how...for now, I'd like to hear about the LVM conversion for the server; I'll bring up the other issues later in different threads when I have the time to address them, but the LVM stuff is intriguing enough that I might be able to squeeze it in in short order if I can do it without risking data, or having to rebuild the system. Thanks, Ben -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
On Thursday 20 December 2007, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:12:17 +0100, Dirk Heinrichs wrote: Then, create a volume group spawning [hs]da3 with name vg00 (you can choose the name freely) and create logical volumes inside: I'd use a less generic name, otherwise you'll have problems if the computer fails and you try to connect the disk to another computer that has a vg00 volume group. I generally use a name related to the computer's hostname, which avoids conflicts. I can already see that this thread is going to run, and run, and ... :) These days most people do not have a separate /boot partition as has already been mentioned. Depending on the size of your disk and your need for a swap partition you may want to have it at the beginning of a partition, or for larger disks in the middle. At the beginning you get faster read/write and in the middle you get faster access (I'm splitting hairs here, but it's fun anyway). Certain partitions (if you decide to go for multi-partition scheme) like /var/tmp, /tmp, /usr will benefit being at the beginning of the disk. Others (e.g. /root, /mnt, /sbin less so). Unlike commonly perceived wisdom I don't think that LVM is a panacea for all ills, or a necessity as such. It is however bloody convenient, especially on a growing fs. A server that is not expected to change much in size, probably does not need it. On the other hand some servers (file, mail, news servers) are bound to continue to accumulate data and their fs will increase in time. I would argue that the former type of server can happily live in a few primary partitions + 1 extended with a number of logical partitions, if you are going for a multi-partitioned scheme, while the latter type of server will greatly benefit from LVM. Of course, if hard drive redundancy is necessary, then I can't see how you could live without LVM + RAID. With regards to your 47G /usr/portage partition I think that it is a waste of space. It won't harm you other than the fact that the 3.8G OS partition is in all likelihood too small. This is what I would do: tar the contents of /usr/portage elsewhere (even in the 3.8G partition - it should fit if you clear any cruft and, or use bzip). Delete the 47G partition and use gparted to enlarge the 3.8G partition to say, 8-10G. Then create a new partition say another 8-10G for /usr/portage. Then create anymore separate partitions you may need (for /home and what have you). mkfs as required, modify your /etc/fstab and move your data in your respective new partitions. If you think your fs is/are going to grow use LVM instead, otherwise primaries and if you need more than 4 then (extended + logical). Just my 2c's. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
Mick wrote: SNIP With regards to your 47G /usr/portage partition I think that it is a waste of space. It won't harm you other than the fact that the 3.8G OS partition is in all likelihood too small. This is what I would do: tar the contents of /usr/portage elsewhere (even in the 3.8G partition - it should fit if you clear any cruft and, or use bzip). Delete the 47G partition and use gparted to enlarge the 3.8G partition to say, 8-10G. Then create a new partition say another 8-10G for /usr/portage. Then create anymore separate partitions you may need (for /home and what have you). mkfs as required, modify your /etc/fstab and move your data in your respective new partitions. If you think your fs is/are going to grow use LVM instead, otherwise primaries and if you need more than 4 then (extended + logical). Just my 2c's. Well, I'm no expert but this has worked for me and this is a 4 or 5 year old install. Your mileage may vary. From cfdisk: hda1 Boot Primary Linux ext2 200.25 hda5Logical Linux 1999.88 hda6Logical Linux ReiserFS1.76 hda7Logical Linux ReiserFS 4999.94 hda8Logical Linux ReiserFS 4999.94 hda9Logical Linux ReiserFS49764.56 This is from df: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda6 19530340 4842172 1468816825% / /dev/hda1 189339 19382 160181 11% /boot /dev/hda7 4882532 2832424 2050108 59% /usr/portage /dev/hda8 4882532 1597144 3285388 33% /home /dev/hdb1 78145768 13720248 6442552018% /data [EMAIL PROTECTED] / # As you can see, I have plenty of space available for future additions, like a space hogging KDE 4.0. :-) The fullest one is /usr/portage which I clean up on occasion with eclean. If I ever change them around again, I will put /var on a separate partition but other than that, it works pretty well. May make root smaller then as well. A lot of this depends on what you are doing with the box tho. It's just something you have to sort of work out as you go which may be why some recommend EVMS or LVM. I have read up on it but just never got up the nerve to try it yet. This is a desktop mostly used to surf the net and run foldingathome on. Hope this helps tho. Dale :-) :-) :-) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Mounting Question...
Dale wrote: Mick wrote: SNIP With regards to your 47G /usr/portage partition I think that it is a waste of space. It won't harm you other than the fact that the 3.8G OS partition is in all likelihood too small. This is what I would do: tar the contents of /usr/portage elsewhere (even in the 3.8G partition - it should fit if you clear any cruft and, or use bzip). Delete the 47G partition and use gparted to enlarge the 3.8G partition to say, 8-10G. Then create a new partition say another 8-10G for /usr/portage. Then create anymore separate partitions you may need (for /home and what have you). mkfs as required, modify your /etc/fstab and move your data in your respective new partitions. If you think your fs is/are going to grow use LVM instead, otherwise primaries and if you need more than 4 then (extended + logical). Well, I'm no expert but this has worked for me and this is a 4 or 5 year old install. Your mileage may vary. From cfdisk: snip As you can see, I have plenty of space available for future additions, like a space hogging KDE 4.0. :-) The fullest one is /usr/portage which I clean up on occasion with eclean. If I ever change them around again, I will put /var on a separate partition but other than that, it works pretty well. May make root smaller then as well. A lot of this depends on what you are doing with the box tho. It's just something you have to sort of work out as you go which may be why some recommend EVMS or LVM. I have read up on it but just never got up the nerve to try it yet. This is a desktop mostly used to surf the net and run foldingathome on. Hope this helps tho. Thanks for the info guys. Yeah - the server has been pretty steady. I use to run it on a P90 with an 8.4 GB (7.6 formatted) hard drive running Slackware and just upgraded to the P2 with Gentoo, namely so I can keep it up to date more. I run Gentoo at work, but the firewall prevents me from getting portage updates there as they block RSYNC and FTP, and the HTTP is authenticated which causes me a lot of pain under *nix. So in some respects I am pretty new to some of this stuff per Gentoo. LVM is certainly not out of the question, I just don't have the time to rebuild the system again - especially since I just built it. So I'd need a path to getting to it. As per the the suggestion of blasting away the 47 GB partition - I'm not sure that's an option. I got away from using Logical partitions a long time ago after I moved to Linux as I found them to be too problematic - I'd never have enough space on the partition I needed space on and to rework it to have enough would require moving around others too. And, as you can see from my other e-mail, I already have 4 primary partitions on each drive (swap included); so I would certainly go to LVM instead of logical partitions. That said, the system itself won't change much, but the current drive layout is probably not the best for where space needs to really be. So I really am open to changing it, but need to do so on the fly with a few reboots and (most importantly) without reinstalling. I do realize Linux makes it pretty easy to move around from partition to partition, which I have done, just not sure how LVM plays into it - thus my other e-mail asking about a path to getting there. (FYI - I did check and LVM2's device-mapper is enabled in the kernel, so it should be pretty straight forward.) Thanks, Ben -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
