Re: [SLUG] Re: Advice Request for moving a Ubuntu installation to a larger disk and 4Gb RAM
I find it useful putting /home on a separate partition. Then if you totally hose your o/s, you can just reinstall and keep all your existing data and app preferences (though of course you'll need to reinstall any additional apps). FWIW, I mount the other partition at /var/local, where I have home directories (under /var/local/home) and the other data I'd rather not lose on reinstall: apt cache (/var/local/cache/apt), databases (/var/local/lib/postgresql), etc., and I put bind mounts in /etc/fstab for /home, /var/cache/apt, etc. Thanks, Nicholas -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Advice Request for moving a Ubuntu installation to a larger disk and 4Gb RAM
On Friday 30 October 2009 09:00:04 slug-requ...@slug.org.au wrote: Thanks everyone for the advice. Following the KISS principle I am going to: 1. Live within the RAM can access now (just over 3Gb) 2. Use a single Linux partition (besides boot) on the larger drive I find it useful putting /home on a separate partition. Then if you totally hose your o/s, you can just reinstall and keep all your existing data and app preferences (though of course you'll need to reinstall any additional apps). Totally agree with Sonia about root and home. and [when] not [if] you hose your install. Upgrades/BadThing Try New Distro all that sort of stuff. Why on earth would you put /boot on a separate partition. That is an artifact of pre-war motherboards (TheGreatWar). James -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Advice Request for moving a Ubuntu installation to a larger disk and 4Gb RAM
jam j...@tigger.ws writes: On Friday 30 October 2009 09:00:04 slug-requ...@slug.org.au wrote: Thanks everyone for the advice. Following the KISS principle I am going to: 1. Live within the RAM can access now (just over 3Gb) 2. Use a single Linux partition (besides boot) on the larger drive I find it useful putting /home on a separate partition. Then if you totally hose your o/s, you can just reinstall and keep all your existing data and app preferences (though of course you'll need to reinstall any additional apps). Totally agree with Sonia about root and home. and [when] not [if] you hose your install. Upgrades/BadThing Try New Distro all that sort of stuff. Why on earth would you put /boot on a separate partition. That is an artifact of pre-war motherboards (TheGreatWar). Actually, there is a second reason for /boot on a separate partition: until very, very, very recently grub1 shipped with most Linux distributions, and it was a fairly stupid bit of software. It could not boot a kernel from anything complex, so any RAID other than strict mirroring, or LVM, meant that the content of /boot was inaccessible to grub, and consequently hard to boot from.[1] Now grub2 is starting to be used more broadly this is slowly changing, but I would still favour the conservative strategy of dropping in a separate partition with a simpler software and file-system stack for /boot. Daniel Footnotes: [1] Some distributions just refused, others deployed lilo instead, with all the pain that implies when something in the boot area changed. -- ✣ Daniel Pittman✉ dan...@rimspace.net☎ +61 401 155 707 ♽ made with 100 percent post-consumer electrons Looking for work? Love Perl? In Melbourne, Australia? We are hiring. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Advice Request for moving a Ubuntu installation to a larger disk and 4Gb RAM
2009/10/30 Daniel Pittman dan...@rimspace.net Actually, there is a second reason for /boot on a separate partition: until very, very, very recently grub1 shipped with most Linux distributions, and it was a fairly stupid bit of software. Thanks for the heads up. That's the only reason I keep doing that (a few Mb for /boot, rest in one large PV). Won't be relevant for CentOS 5, which is what I install on servers every day, but still nice to know I should look for it in the desktop/laptop Ubuntu's. Another potential casus-belli: once you use the entire disk as a PV - would you still create a partition table with one partition in it? Personally I'd do it that way because it helps label the disk with something anything can read - even a Windows would know that the disk is occupied by *something*. Cheers, --Amos -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Advice Request for moving a Ubuntu installation to a larger disk and 4Gb RAM
Amos Shapira amos.shap...@gmail.com writes: 2009/10/30 Daniel Pittman dan...@rimspace.net Actually, there is a second reason for /boot on a separate partition: until very, very, very recently grub1 shipped with most Linux distributions, and it was a fairly stupid bit of software. Thanks for the heads up. That's the only reason I keep doing that (a few Mb for /boot, rest in one large PV). Won't be relevant for CentOS 5, which is what I install on servers every day, but still nice to know I should look for it in the desktop/laptop Ubuntu's. *nod* Personally, it will be a few years before I trust grub2 enough to do away with the dead simple boot partition, and perhaps longer. (Plus, if we end up with EFI rather than BIOS machines we will need to do it anyway; they use a FAT partition for the same reason. :) Another potential casus-belli: once you use the entire disk as a PV - would you still create a partition table with one partition in it? Personally I'd do it that way because it helps label the disk with something anything can read - even a Windows would know that the disk is occupied by *something*. *nod* That is exactly what I do: partition table, for other systems, one or two partitions, depending on separate /boot or not, and the rest of the data inside LVs. Daniel Perhaps seasons with a bit of luks or MD software RAID in between the partition and the PV. -- ✣ Daniel Pittman✉ dan...@rimspace.net☎ +61 401 155 707 ♽ made with 100 percent post-consumer electrons Looking for work? Love Perl? In Melbourne, Australia? We are hiring. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: Advice Request for moving a Ubuntu installation to a larger disk and 4Gb RAM
snip/ Thanks everyone for the advice. Following the KISS principle I am going to: 1. Live within the RAM can access now (just over 3Gb) 2. Use a single Linux partition (besides boot) on the larger drive This will reduce the migration to an rsync and accessing less than an extra 1Gb RAM is not worth the potential costs. Thanks, Bill Donoghoe -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Advice Request for moving a Ubuntu installation to a larger disk and 4Gb RAM
On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:04:12 +1100, Bill Donoghoe donogh...@gmail.com said: snip/ Thanks everyone for the advice. Following the KISS principle I am going to: 1. Live within the RAM can access now (just over 3Gb) 2. Use a single Linux partition (besides boot) on the larger drive I find it useful putting /home on a separate partition. Then if you totally hose your o/s, you can just reinstall and keep all your existing data and app preferences (though of course you'll need to reinstall any additional apps). Sonia. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
