Re: [gentoo-user] Advice about setting up split home directory
Alan E. Davis wrote: Norberto and Josh: Thank you for the suggestion. It's on the back burner. I have the space to experiment with it now. I have balked for the time being on basis of, partly, my need to be able to swap drives in and out, and have it clear in mind which partitions belong to what. Also my main drive is a 1 RPM faster drive, and I'd like to keep the partitions or directories that are mainly for storage separated. I really do notice a difference in the performance of the drive. this is somewhat of a conundrum: how to keep the current projects focused on the faster drive. Interestingly (to me) while I carefully planned for swap on the faster drive, since I moved to 2GB of RAM, I think I've only touched swap two or three times, and then only passingly! I definitely wouldn't want to put / into LVM. If I do LVM it will be the easy way, the most clearcut way. As one that's used LVM and other similar software in both Windows and the BSDs, be sure you understand the risk involved. While the idea of one big drive sounds appealing (which is why I used it), lose one drive and you lose everything in the LV unless you are mirroring, using parity, or some combination of both. I have been bit by this time and time again and have finally decided that LVM is not worth the hassle for me any longer, especially since a 1 TB drive can be found easily for less than $200 (US). Anyway, I'm not knocking those who use LVM. Just understand the risk. :) Cheers, Drew -- Be a Great Magician! Visit The Alchemist's Warehouse http://www.alchemistswarehouse.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice about setting up split home directory
On Mon, Aug 04, 2008 at 03:10:37PM +1000, Alan E. Davis wrote Norberto and Josh: Thank you for the suggestion. It's on the back burner. I have the space to experiment with it now. I have balked for the time being on basis of, partly, my need to be able to swap drives in and out, and have it clear in mind which partitions belong to what. Also my main drive is a 1 RPM faster drive, and I'd like to keep the partitions or directories that are mainly for storage separated. I really do notice a difference in the performance of the drive. this is somewhat of a conundrum: how to keep the current projects focused on the faster drive. There's another approach with bind mounts to reduce wasted space. The following example is not a joke (notwithstanding the opinions of some posters here g). I used a 500 megabyte / partition, playing it safe because it was my first try, but I could've gotten away with 200 megs. Here's what fdisk -l and df show... [d530][root][~] fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xd000 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 [d530][root][~] df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 482186 30376426913 7% / udev 10240 152 10088 2% /dev /dev/sda7483959368 100296316 383663052 21% /home shm1031872 0 1031872 0% /dev/shm I create empty /opt /tmp /usr and /var directories in the 500 meg main partition (sda5). Except for swap, the rest of the drive is allocated to sda7, which is mounted as /home. I create /home/bindmounts and then /home/bindmounts/opt /home/bindmounts/tmp /home/bindmounts/usr and /home/bindmounts/var. Then I bindmount them to their equivalants on the / partition. I have a script to set up the correct permissions. The result is that you can run with a 200 meg main partition, without using LVM. Under /home is /home/misc, where I put /home/misc/movies/ /home/misc/music and /home/misc/photos. This may not be ideal for a production server, but I like it at home, because I don't have to screw around with multiple partitions. -- Walter Dnes [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[gentoo-user] Advice about setting up split home directory
Thanks to advice on this list I have a reasonably stable system now, and it's time to get hands dirty. I have more GB of collected files than I can fit into my ~/ home directory, so I am planning to link several partitions to ~/ in an effort to organize this mass. 1. How could one reasonably link a subdir of a partition as a subdir or folder of one's ~/, for example, /dev/sdd3/VIDEO (partition on that partition called VIDEO) as a subdirectory, ~/VIDEO? I want ~/VIDEO to behave identically as it would if it were on the same partition as ~/ . At least to the greatest extent possible. I have seen some arcane arrangement somewhere, but to what extent is that necessary to do? I would rather avoid having to mount the entire parition as a subdir, and then have to access, for example, ~/ARCHIVE/VIDEO. 2. As an aside, Nautllus (~/amd64 Gnome overlay, version 2.23.5.1) behavior differs from that in Ubuntu. I have resisted the use of a GUI file manager for a long time, except for a few tasks, and especially I have avoided nautilus as a tool for moving files around the system. The availability of bookmarks in the sidepane is highly useful, however, and I've gotten used to it. Can I remove the display of ~/media/* from the sidepanel? This has enabled me to organize my system much more effectively. Thunar is more to my taste in this way, but nautilus has other useful features, including it is integrated with gnome. Thank you for any advice. Also thanks to the list for past helpful advice. Alan -- Alan Davis It's never a matter of liking or disliking ... ---Santa Ynez Chumash Medicine Man
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice about setting up split home directory
Alan E. Davis ha scritto: Thanks to advice on this list I have a reasonably stable system now, and it's time to get hands dirty. I have more GB of collected files than I can fit into my ~/ home directory, so I am planning to link several partitions to ~/ in an effort to organize this mass. 1. How could one reasonably link a subdir of a partition as a subdir or folder of one's ~/, for example, /dev/sdd3/VIDEO (partition on that partition called VIDEO) as a subdirectory, ~/VIDEO? I want ~/VIDEO to behave identically as it would if it were on the same partition as ~/ . At least to the greatest extent possible. I have seen some arcane arrangement somewhere, but to what extent is that necessary to do? I would rather avoid having to mount the entire parition as a subdir, and then have to access, for example, ~/ARCHIVE/VIDEO. What's wrong with using symbolic links? m.
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice about setting up split home directory
On Sonntag, 3. August 2008, Alan E. Davis wrote: Thanks to advice on this list I have a reasonably stable system now, and it's time to get hands dirty. I have more GB of collected files than I can fit into my ~/ home directory, so I am planning to link several partitions to ~/ in an effort to organize this mass. 1. How could one reasonably link a subdir of a partition as a subdir or folder of one's ~/, for example, /dev/sdd3/VIDEO (partition on that partition called VIDEO) as a subdirectory, ~/VIDEO? I want ~/VIDEO to behave identically as it would if it were on the same partition as ~/ . At least to the greatest extent possible. I have seen some arcane arrangement somewhere, but to what extent is that necessary to do? I would rather avoid having to mount the entire parition as a subdir, and then have to access, for example, ~/ARCHIVE/VIDEO. man mount, also google for 'bind' mounting. 2. As an aside, Nautllus (~/amd64 Gnome overlay, version 2.23.5.1) behavior differs from that in Ubuntu. because ubuntu patches A LOT. Ubuntu-gnome is not gnome.
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice about setting up split home directory
On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 11:17 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: man mount, also google for 'bind' mounting. Thank you. That was it. IN answer to another query, as to why not symlink, I cannot point to a particular behavior, but I have found that symlinks do not behave in all situations like real hardlinks. What I want it something like a hardlink to a directory. I think this may be possible with bind mounting. One major problem with nautilus or any other GUI file manager---in fact many, many GUI programs that rely on mouse input primarily---has been the loss of subtler capabilities like hard link. I've been looking at using hardlinks to organize my literature collection. A single paper may belong equally in several categories. Or for photos, to go beyond, say, catalogs in gthumbs: catalogs are possibly lost in an upgrade or minor accident. I'd be interested in seeing particular examples of the use of bind mounts for the purposes I propose. Reiterating: - mounting a directory from another tree with a full status in all respects as a directory on the current tree. - mounting a directory in several places. (A subdirectory of microscopical images and another subdirectory of notes can be linked together in the same directory under the specific project or organism under study). Perhaps a more skilled approach to the use of symlinks would serve the same purpose more directly? Thank you again for the input. Alan -- Alan Davis It's never a matter of liking or disliking ... ---Santa Ynez Chumash Medicine Man
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice about setting up split home directory
Alan E. Davis wrote: Thanks to advice on this list I have a reasonably stable system now, and it's time to get hands dirty. I have more GB of collected files than I can fit into my ~/ home directory, so I am planning to link several partitions to ~/ in an effort to organize this mass. Personally I'd suggest using LVM for this, although migrating to LVM would require you to back up your current filesystems (such as creating a stage 4 as described on the gentoo-wiki), reformatting your filesystems to LVM, and then un-tarring back to the LVM system. I'm not sure if that's more work than you bargained for, but LVM has some fantastic features that prevent these sort of out of space issues: 1) You can leave some hard disk space in the Volume Group (VG) initially unallocated to Logical Volumes (LV's) and then add the unallocated space later to an LV (and its underlying filesystem) when it starts to become full. This ability to grow an LV and the underlying filesystem can happen while the filesystem is online and in-use. 2) You can shrink LV's as well, although they need to be unmounted first. 3) You can easily migrate between hard drives while the system is online by moving LV's from one Physical Volume (PV) (eg: a hard disk) to another. 4) You can add multiple hard drives to an LVM Volume Group (VG - essentially a collection of PV's) and use the storage space from both drives to allocate space to an LV. LVM is worth a look, at least to understand some of its benefits. I typically set my root partition at about 512 MB and then create LVM partitions for /home, /usr, /opt, and /var. (You could do the same for /tmp, but I use tmpfs for that.) It's possible to do LVM on the / partition, but that requires an initrd to work properly. -- Josh signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice about setting up split home directory
Quoting Josh Cepek [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Personally I'd suggest using LVM for this ++ 1) ++ 2) ++ 3) You can easily migrate between hard drives while the system is online by moving LV's from one Physical Volume (PV) (eg: a hard disk) to another. --!! Have you ever tried that? I've almost killed both hard drives doing an on-line migration to a bigger HD. I wouldn't recommend it. 4) ++ LVM is worth a look, ++!!! /tmp, but I use tmpfs for that.) It's possible to do LVM on the / partition, but that requires an initrd to work properly. Josh You can use genkernel for that. Just configure your kernel as always, adding initrd features and then: genkernel --lvm [your-options] Easy. Regards, Norberto This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
Re: [gentoo-user] Advice about setting up split home directory
Norberto and Josh: Thank you for the suggestion. It's on the back burner. I have the space to experiment with it now. I have balked for the time being on basis of, partly, my need to be able to swap drives in and out, and have it clear in mind which partitions belong to what. Also my main drive is a 1 RPM faster drive, and I'd like to keep the partitions or directories that are mainly for storage separated. I really do notice a difference in the performance of the drive. this is somewhat of a conundrum: how to keep the current projects focused on the faster drive. Interestingly (to me) while I carefully planned for swap on the faster drive, since I moved to 2GB of RAM, I think I've only touched swap two or three times, and then only passingly! I definitely wouldn't want to put / into LVM. If I do LVM it will be the easy way, the most clearcut way. Alan On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 1:59 PM, Norberto Bensa [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quoting Josh Cepek [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Personally I'd suggest using LVM for this -- Alan Davis It's never a matter of liking or disliking ... ---Santa Ynez Chumash Medicine Man
