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/tmp 28.0 GB 30721.43 MB /dev/hdb3 /usr/portage 47.0 GB 51202.37 MB /dev/hdb4 SWAP 10.0 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 list
