On 11/18/05, Ralph Shumaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> DJA wrote:
>
> > Ralph Shumaker wrote:
> >
> >> DJA wrote:
> >>
> >>> Ralph Shumaker wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> DJA wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> But have you looked at what the corresponding GID actually is for a
> >>> given user created with the GUI tool? I prefer the UID and GID
> >>> (numerical values) to match.
> >>>
> >>> what does
> >>>
> >>> $ ls -lan /home/
> >>>
> >>> show?
> >>
> >>
> >> I'm not around that PC. But I did confirm that both the files owner
> >> and group displayed correctly in each user's home directory. Just
> >> looking on my own PC here, where I used the GUI tool to set up the
> >> users, the first user "rafael" has matching UID and GID (500). The
> >> second user has matching also (501). After that, I set up a special
> >> group (502). In hindsight, I probably should have set it up with an
> >> unusually high GID. But I didn't. Much, much later (very recently),
> >> I added a third user. He got UID 502 and GID 503, but only because
> >> they each were the next in line respectively.
> >>
> >> 04:47:55 $ ls -lan /home/
> >> total 20
> >> drwxr-xr-x 5 0 0 4096 Oct 27 09:58 .
> >> drwxr-xr-x 24 1000 0 4096 Nov 12 20:42 ..
> >> drwx------ 19 501 501 4096 Jan 13 2005 dick
> >> drwx------ 21 502 503 4096 Nov 12 02:19 gvl
> >> drwx------ 52 500 500 4096 Nov 15 04:35 rafael
> >>
> >> 04:48:05 $
> >
> >
> > Yes. gvl has a UID matching SpecialGroup's GID. Why wouldn't gvl have
> > a UID of 502 and a GID of 502? Because SpecialGroup already has a GID
> > of 502. I would have set gvl's UID/GID to 504/504.
>
>
> I would have also. I just was not thinking about that when I added it.
> But the only time I ever see it is when I go to the Users and Groups
> GUI. In normal use, why would you ever use -n (in ls -lan)?
Only when troubleshooting, which I think was the situation here.
> > Which is why I don't like the GUI tool's automatic numbering scheme.
> > BTW, I don't ever remember having this problem with RH9 and earlier.
>
>
> RH9 is where I did it (on my PC, the special group with no user that is).
>
> I suppose I could have set up a UID along with the special GID, but I
> did not want to create a user's home directory for it, although come to
> think of it, that may have helped in other ways. Oh well. If I ever
> care to deal with it, I will correct it all then.
You can have a UID without a corresponding user's home directory. Look at
nobody:nobody:x:99:99:Nobody:/:/sbin/nologin
>
> >>>> And what is the reasoning behind partitioning, anyway? Either I
> >>>> never understood this, or I have just plain forgotten.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> May I assume that when you an installation, you just let the
> >>> installer make partitioning decisions for you?
> >>>
> >>> My reasoning? Stuff tends to fill all available space. That includes
> >>> hard drives. Every new incarnation of most any Linux distribution
> >>> seems to need more and more space on the root partition. I never
> >>> throw stuff away so my /home partition is never big enough [1].
> >>>
> >>> And inevitably I make at least one partition way too big at the same
> >>> time I make another, more important, partition way too small. Of
> >>> course, were I a fortune teller, I could avoid such mistakes, but as
> >>> I'm not, LVM is the next best thing.
> >>
> >>
> >> Nothing you stated here seems to argue against one big partition
> >> (aside from swap). You answer a question I did not ask. You
> >> answered: "What is your reasoning behind partition sizes?" I was
> >> not asking about the reason for sizing the chunks, but rather the
> >> reason for chunking it in the first place.
> >
> >
> > It's far easier to re-install when I can reformat all partition except
> > those I don't want to format. For a really simple setup, I have a
> > separate /home partition. When I want to upgrade my distro (e.g. FC1
> > -> FC4), I tell the installer to format all partitions except /home.
> > That way I still have all my users' stuff - including a reference to
> > their respective UID/GID.
> >
> > If I have some apps I installed to /usr/local, I can tell the
> > installer not to format /home and /usr/local.
Even better, you can move everything from /usr/local to /home/local
and then bind-mount it.
> So, at this point, it seems that it would be a good idea to have /home
> and /usr/local as separate partitions. And to be easily resizable, it
> would be good to have them as LVMs.
>
> When reinstalling, you can tell the formatter to leave an LVM alone?
yes
> When reinstalling, the distro being installed will know about the apps
> you installed previously in /usr/local?
Your search path $PATH will presumably include /usr/local/bin
> > If you have only one big partition then
> >
> > o If your partition gets messed up bad, you lose *everything*[1].
> >
> > o If your / (root) partition gets messed up bad, you lose
> > *everything*[1].
> >
> > o When you do upgrades of your distro, you have to restore *all* data
> > and /home directories if you reformat [2].
> >
> > o It's more difficult to reallocate space from over-allocated
> > directories to under-allocated directories (e.g. you just ran
> > out of space in /tmp because the latest distro upgrade needed
> > five more gigabytes in /usr ).
>
>
> This last item sounds like a reason *for* one big partition. Or at the
> very least, this last item sounds like an argument for resizable
> partitions as opposed to solid partitions. Can an LVM span drives?
Yes. Although you probably don't want to do that as a newbie LVM user.
carl
--
carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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