subject:"About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice."

Okay I figured out how to make more partitions on LVM, just want to
make sure if the bootable flag on the LVM should be ON or OFF


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

> Yes.  Partition manually, and create a partition to hold *all* your
> Linux data.  However, rather than selecting a filesystem type, you
> choose "Physical volume for LVM", and then configure LVM.  It will
> then let you use this partition for a new LVM volume group.  Once
> that's done you can add as many logical volumes as you like, and
> assign mountpoints to them, make swapspace etc, and then continue
> with the install as usual.

I have 685 GB free space. I choose 585 GB as my primary partition and
set it as LVM.
Should I keep the bootable flag ON or OFF for this partition.

Also After that how can I create sub-volume? Can't find a way to do
that in the installer!


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 11:25 PM, Anubhav Yadav  wrote:
> [...]
> Windows was very bad again and it created two primary partitions,one 79 GB
> for the windows, and the other 86 mb for bootloader.

Funny thing about that. They're sort of imitating the Linux community
with that, except the Linux community is working to make our version
of the boot loader partition shareable between multiple OSses.

> So tomorrow, I will be installing debian on the remaining space.
>
> Now my question is, What should I choose? Logical volume? or Primary Volume?

The current way of doing things seems to be to have one primary volume
for the Linux boot partition and one logical volume for the remainder
of your partitions. But there are two kinds of logical volumes. One is
what we used to call a DOS (MS-DOS) extended or logical partition. The
other is the LVM you've heard quite a bit about in this thread.
(Actually, you could say there are more kinds than that, including ZFS
and such.)

> I think I cannot create more than 4 primary volumes on a hdd, and
> since two are already
> occupied, I should create
> /home, /, /usr and /var all logical volumes. (Choice of partitions on
> the basis of discussions above)

That's the concept. It is also possible, as has been mentioned, to
install the whole OS in one single partition. Probably. I don't really
think you want to do that, anyway.

> Will choosing logical volumes harm any performance on the hdd?

You're not going to get it right the first time. Or the second time.
And then you will take a different class at school, and what was right
for the last class might not be the best for the next one. That's one
reason you should get an external drive, so you can back your data up
easily and do it a different way, just to see what happens.

Two things you need to understand, you probably don't want to try this
without using some sort of "logical volume". I have had a system where
I had two remaining primary partitions, and I made one swap (1G) and
the other root (the rest of the disk). That was several years ago, and
doing such a thing now is actually harder, not easier, I think.

I think I need to explain those four "primary volumes". I was hoping I
could refer you to wikipedia, but the present article,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

has too much information on stuff that will be distracting from the
purpose here. (Microsfot's page on the topic seems to be just enough
information to help the sales crew, as usual.)

History: Back in the days of MS-DOS, whose evil spawn became the
unworthy standard we now have, in order to keep the disk layout simple
and leave as much as possible for data, DOS fixed the number of hard
disk partitions to four. Because of the elements of the spec that
became the effective standard, we are stuck with that number. These
are what I call primary DOS partitions in my better moments. I'm
pretty sure they are what you are calling primary volumes.

Back in the mid-80s (IIRC), Micorosoff admitted their sins and
grudgingly yielded one of those to be an extendable (or "extended", go
figure) partition. Nowadays it is often called a "logical volume" or
some other term that abuses the English.

(Back then, even among English-speaking computer geeks, there weren't
very many who really understood English. That's why so much of the
jargon is confusing. The situation has not improved, especially since
the sales crew seems to enjoy using the confusion to sell people
things they don't need.)

I'm going to call it the extended partitions. Only one of the four
primary partitions is allowed to be extended, you see.

Within that extended partition, you can cut a number of "logical
partitions". Quite a few, in fact. (I'm going to call them logical
partitions here.) So, what you have looks sort of like this:

DOS (physical) Partition C
DOS (physical) Partition D
DOS (physical) Partition E
DOS extended partition (no letter):
DOS (logical) Partition F
DOS (logical) Partition G

The extended partition does not have to be the last one, but there can
be only one.

Now, we don't have to follow this plan in non-DOS OSses. Mac OS did
not, but sort of does now, for compatibility. openBSD and netBSD, and,
I think, freeBSD can take over the whole drive with their own
partitioning system and completely ignore the DOS scheme. But then
it's not compatible with the Microsoft world, and Micorosfot-trained
techs who try to mount such a drive will see no partitions at all, and
think the drive is damaged or blank. And then they wipe the data or do
something else bad.

Linux, likewise, doesn't really have to do it this way. But we try to
maintain compatibility, for dual boot purposes, and to try to avoid
surprising Microsotf-trained techs.

Now, if you use a DOS extended partition, and use DOS logical
partitions, you don't get to re-size the partitions. (At least, if you
do re-size, you could easily lose data.) If you go this way, here's
how it might look:

DOS (primary)

Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-10 Thread Chris Bannister

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 07:55:38PM +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> Hello everyone, I have got some good news.
> The hdd is now back from the dead,alive and working well.

Alright!

> I went to my friend who had that casing. He attached my hdd to
> his windows 7 machine and as usual, it didn't show up.
> 
> So I had a debian laptop with me , and I connected the hdd to that
> laptop and viola, dmseg showed this

:)  BTW, did you create all those partitions, or is it an artifact of
having gone belly up?

Just make sure you don't repeat the procedure which got you into this
situation in the first place. :)

Give it a good test from a live CD *BEFORE* you partition or install
anything. I think there are special live CD's for this. Or use a live CD
with the appropriate software.

> Now my question is, What should I choose? Logical volume? or Primary Volume?
> I think I cannot create more than 4 primary volumes on a hdd, and
> since two are already
> occupied, I should create
> /home, /, /usr and /var all logical volumes. (Choice of partitions on
> the basis of discussions above)
> 
> Will choosing logical volumes harm any performance on the hdd?

Don't confuse yourself. You're confusing volumes with partitions.

I thought you were going to look at LVM, and therefore as I understand
it, this won't be a concern?

-- 
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who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-10 Thread Roger Leigh

On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 02:20:29AM +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> I am reading a lot on LVM, and it seems that I have a small doubt. I
> found this on tldp HOWTO on LVM:
> 
> > root on LVM requires an initrd image that activates the root LV. If a 
> > kernel is upgraded without building the necessary initrd image, that 
> > >kernel will be unbootable. Newer distributions support lvm in their 
> > mkinitrd scripts as well as their packaged initrd images, so this >becomes 
> > less of an issue over time.
> 
> I am not able to understand this but will it affect me on debian?

No.  You can boot directly from an LVM LV, and the installer will
set up a suitable initrd for you and configure grub to load the
kernel and initrd from LVM.  As the above says, new distributions
support it properly.

If you have a complex setup (e.g. on RAID5), you might need a
separate /boot.  If it's a single disc, it will work just fine.
If you're concerned, just create a separate /boot; it's not
necessary, but it doesn't hurt.

> Also while I am on the partitioner page on the debian-installer, there
> is one choice like:
> "Guided: Use entire disc and setup as LVM"
> 
> Now since I am doing a dual boot and windows is already installed, I
> feel I cannot use this option
> as it will wipe the partition used by windows.
> 
> Can I set LVM using some other method?

Yes.  Partition manually, and create a partition to hold *all* your
Linux data.  However, rather than selecting a filesystem type, you
choose "Physical volume for LVM", and then configure LVM.  It will
then let you use this partition for a new LVM volume group.  Once
that's done you can add as many logical volumes as you like, and
assign mountpoints to them, make swapspace etc, and then continue
with the install as usual.

> > ravenclaw# lvextend --size +1G --resizefs /dev/ravenclaw/chroots
> Is there a simple gui tool available for the same?

I have no idea myself.  I've always just used the tools directly.

Regards,
Roger

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

I am reading a lot on LVM, and it seems that I have a small doubt. I
found this on tldp HOWTO on LVM:

> root on LVM requires an initrd image that activates the root LV. If a kernel 
> is upgraded without building the necessary initrd image, that >kernel will be 
> unbootable. Newer distributions support lvm in their mkinitrd scripts as well 
> as their packaged initrd images, so this >becomes less of an issue over time.

I am not able to understand this but will it affect me on debian?

Also while I am on the partitioner page on the debian-installer, there
is one choice like:
"Guided: Use entire disc and setup as LVM"

Now since I am doing a dual boot and windows is already installed, I
feel I cannot use this option
as it will wipe the partition used by windows.

Can I set LVM using some other method?


> ravenclaw# lvextend --size +1G --resizefs /dev/ravenclaw/chroots
>   Extending logical volume chroots to 13.00 GiB
>   Logical volume chroots successfully resized
> resize2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014)
> Filesystem at /dev/mapper/ravenclaw-chroots is mounted on /srv/chroots; 
> on-line resizing required
> old_desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 1
> The filesystem on /dev/mapper/ravenclaw-chroots is now 3407872 blocks long.
>
> ravenclaw# df /srv/chroots
> Filesystem1K-blocksUsed Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/mapper/ravenclaw-chroots  13286512 4632220   7966824  37% /srv/chroots
>
> So you can see the size increased by 1GiB and we didn't even have
> to unmount the filesystem--it all happened online with no
> interruption in service.

Is there a simple gui tool available for the same?


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-10 Thread Roger Leigh

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 10:46:59PM +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> >From the three possible choice you have enlisted me, I think lvm seems
> to be the best option for me, '
> so that I can give very little allocation to /var or /temp, and I can
> later expand these logical volumes whenever
> required?
> 
> A couple of questions:
> 
> 1) Suppose I give more allocation to /var and later find out that I
> require more space for /home partition,
> can I shrink my /temp partition and increase my /home partition?

This depends upon whether the filesystem supports shrinking and if
shrinking is possible.  I've never tried it.

Normally you would just not allocate the space until you really
need it.  Example:

ravenclaw# pvs
  PV VGFmt  Attr PSize   PFree  
  /dev/sdb4  ravenclaw lvm2 a--  256.00g 207.51g
ravenclaw# vgs
  VG#PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree  
  ravenclaw   1   4   0 wz--n- 256.00g 207.51g
ravenclaw# lvs
  LV  VGAttr   LSize  Pool Origin Data%  Move Log Cpy%Sync 
Convert
  btrsnap ravenclaw -wi-a-  6.00g   

  chroots ravenclaw -wi-ao 12.00g   

  swapravenclaw -wi-ao 14.90g   

  var ravenclaw -wi-ao 15.59g

% mount | grep ravenclaw   
/dev/mapper/ravenclaw-var on /var type ext4 (rw,nodev,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/mapper/ravenclaw-chroots on /srv/chroots type ext4 
(rw,relatime,data=ordered)

So here I have 50GiB allocated to four logical volumes, and
over 200GiB unallocated.  I can create new LVs, make snapshots
and new LVs with this free space.  In terms of disc partitions,
there's just one (/dev/sdb4).

Basically, I'm recommending that you allocate space for just
what you need, plus a little spare, and then you won't need
to shrink anything to free up space--it will just be available.
If you need space for anything special-purpose, just create
an LV for it, and when you're done you can delete it and free
up the space for something else.

> 2) I need to find how to increase the partitions in LVM, can they be
> easily done using gparted?

No.  The partitions, as in real disc partitions, don't change size
once it's set up.  Use lvextend to increase the size of a logical
volume.  Here's an example extending one of the above LVs from 12
to 13GiB:

ravenclaw# df /srv/chroots
Filesystem1K-blocksUsed Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ravenclaw-chroots  12254384 4632220   6976636  40% /srv/chroots

ravenclaw# lvextend --size +1G --resizefs /dev/ravenclaw/chroots 
  Extending logical volume chroots to 13.00 GiB
  Logical volume chroots successfully resized
resize2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014)
Filesystem at /dev/mapper/ravenclaw-chroots is mounted on /srv/chroots; on-line 
resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 1
The filesystem on /dev/mapper/ravenclaw-chroots is now 3407872 blocks long.

ravenclaw# df /srv/chroots  
Filesystem1K-blocksUsed Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/ravenclaw-chroots  13286512 4632220   7966824  37% /srv/chroots

So you can see the size increased by 1GiB and we didn't even have
to unmount the filesystem--it all happened online with no
interruption in service.

Regards,
Roger

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

>From the three possible choice you have enlisted me, I think lvm seems
to be the best option for me, '
so that I can give very little allocation to /var or /temp, and I can
later expand these logical volumes whenever
required?

A couple of questions:

1) Suppose I give more allocation to /var and later find out that I
require more space for /home partition,
can I shrink my /temp partition and increase my /home partition?

2) I need to find how to increase the partitions in LVM, can they be
easily done using gparted?


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-10 Thread Roger Leigh

On Sun, Feb 09, 2014 at 04:23:27PM -0500, Doug wrote:
> On 02/09/2014 04:05 PM, Roger Leigh wrote:
> 
> /snip/
> > On W
> > On Linux, there are three possibilities which mitigate all these
> > things:
> >
> > 1) Use LVM.  You can use the entire drive as a single physical volume
> > (PV) and then carve it up into separate logical volumes (LVs).  This
> > allows exactly the same strategy as above, but you can start with
> > the minimum needed size for each partition and leave the remaining
> > space unallocated.  Should you need additional space for any of the
> > volumes, you can just extend it on demand.  Downside: space allocation
> > is manual and some degree of space wastage still occurs.
> >
> > 2) Use Btrfs.  You can have a single Btrfs volume, and then use
> > subvolumes for all the separate parts, divided up exactly as above.
> > The subvolumes may be independently snapshotted, backed up and
> > preserved.  The rootfs itself can be a subvolume.  The main problem
> > here is that Btrfs isn't production ready, so I can't recommend it
> > unless you don't care about your data.
> >
> > 3) Use ZFS.  Allocate the drive as a single zpool.  You can then create
> > zfs volumes for all the separate bits.  However, you don't have the
> > space wastage issues since all the data is in a single pool, and
> > you can adjust the size allocations/quotas on demand for each
> > individual volume (or leave them unset to give them as much space as
> > they can get).  Needs a kernel patch for the zfs driver.  With
> > kFreeBSD you can do this natively.  It has all sorts of great
> > features which I won't go into here.
> >
> > I've tried all three.  For Linux, using LVM is easy and can be done
> > in the installer.  If you reinstall you can keep the LVs you want and
> > wipe/delete the rest.
> /snip/
> >
> > Regards,
> > Roger
> >
> I don't understand LVM, but I tried to install some distro just to
> learn about it, and it would only install using LVM, which meant
> that it would only install on the entire hard drive. No partitions,
> no Windows, no nothing.

While it's possible to use LVM in this manner, it's definitely not
typical.  The Physical Volumes are block devices, and as such may be
made up of entire discs, but are typically a single partition on one
disc, or spanned over multiple discs, or on top of MD RAID arrays.
If you install on LVM in the Debian Installer, you can do any of the
above; it certainly won't install on an entire disc by default.  You
normally partition and mark certain partitions as PVs for LVM.

I would certainly recommend taking a second look into LVM.  You might
be surprised at how much of an improvement it is once you've got over
the initial learning curve.  Just think of it as being similar to
traditional partitions, but with the ability to dynamically
reconfigure things on the fly, e.g. online resizing of filesystems.

Just as an example, I've shown below what a simple ZFS setup can look
like.  It's a FreeBSD10 fileserver, but it's basically the same on
Linux.  I'd show a kFreeBSD example but the system isn't online at
present.  Here there are two pools, a single disk with the rootfs, and
a RAID1 array with the user data.  Note the scrub status for the
mirror--this is giving us an additional level of error identification+
repair which no other filesystem offers [except btrfs, but you wouldn't
want to use it as previously mentioned].  All the individual datasets
(equivalent to a partition), are separately mounted but the storage is
all taken from the pool they belong to, so the space wastage from
partitioning is eliminated entirely.

Just to comment on the use of a whole disk, note here the pools are all
made of individual partitions, but could be whole discs if desired,
just like for LVM PVs.

% zpool status
  pool: bsdroot
 state: ONLINE
  scan: none requested
config:

NAME  STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
bsdroot   ONLINE   0 0 0
  gptid/7173ee99-882f-11e3-88e2-38eaa7ab6153  ONLINE   0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

  pool: green
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 13h44m with 0 errors on Mon Feb 10 11:33:10 2014
config:

NAME   STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
green  ONLINE   0 0 0
  mirror-0 ONLINE   0 0 0
diskid/DISK-WD-WMAZA3538113p2  ONLINE   0 0 0
diskid/DISK-WD-WMAZA3538412p2  ONLINE   0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

% zfs list
NAME USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
bsdroot 6.37G   210G   144K  none
bsdroot/ROOT2.09G   210G   144K  none
bsdroot/ROOT/default2.09G   210G  2.09G  /
bsdroot/tmp 1014M   210G  1014M  /tmp
bsdroot/usr

Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

Hello everyone, I have got some good news.
The hdd is now back from the dead,alive and working well.

I went to my friend who had that casing. He attached my hdd to
his windows 7 machine and as usual, it didn't show up.

So I had a debian laptop with me , and I connected the hdd to that
laptop and viola, dmseg showed this

> [  101.317618] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
> [  101.317784] scsi6 : usb-storage 2-1.2:1.0
> [  101.317865] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
> [  101.317867] USB Mass Storage support registered.
> [  102.316522] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-AccessMass  Storage Device
> PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
> [  102.318131] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
> [  102.318814] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 1465149166 512-byte logical blocks: (750 
> GB/698 GiB)
> [  102.319444] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
> [  102.319459] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
> [  102.320084] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
> [  102.320091] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
> [  102.322308] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
> [  102.322316] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
> [  102.404425]  sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 < sdb5 sdb6 sdb7 sdb8 sdb9 sdb10 sdb11 
> sdb12 sdb13 sdb14 sdb15 sdb16 sdb17 sdb18 sdb19 sdb20 sdb21 sdb22 sdb23 sdb24 
> sdb25 sdb26 sdb27 sdb28 sdb29 sdb30 sdb31 sdb32 sdb33 sdb34 sdb35 sdb36 sdb37 
> sdb38 sdb39 sdb40 sdb41 sdb42 sdb43 sdb44 sdb45 sdb46 sdb47 sdb48 sdb49 sdb50 
> sdb51 sdb52 sdb53 sdb54 sdb55 sdb56 sdb57 sdb58 sdb59 sdb60 sdb61 sdb62 sdb63 
> sdb64 sdb65 sdb66 sdb67 sdb68 sdb69 sdb70 sdb71 sdb72 sdb73 sdb74 sdb75 sdb76 
> sdb77 sdb78 sdb79 sdb80 sdb81 sdb82 sdb83 sdb84 sdb85 sdb86 sdb87 sdb88 sdb89 
> sdb90 sdb91 sdb92 sdb93 sdb94 sdb95 sdb96 sdb97 sdb98 sdb99 sdb100 sdb101 
> sdb102 sdb103 sdb104 sdb105 sdb106 sdb107 sdb108 sdb109 sdb110 sdb111 sdb112 
> sdb113 sdb114 sdb115 sdb116 sdb117 sdb118 sdb119 sdb120 sdb121 sdb122 sdb123 
> sdb124 sdb125 sdb126 sdb127 sdb128 sdb129 sdb130 sdb131 sdb132 sdb133 sdb134 
> sdb135 sdb136 sdb137 sdb138 sdb139 sdb140 sdb141 sdb142 sdb143 sdb144 sdb145 
> sdb146 sdb147 sdb148 sdb149 sdb150 sdb151 sdb152 sdb153 sdb154 sdb155 sdb156 
> sdb157 sdb158 sdb159 sdb160 sdb16

So I fired up gparted, and it showed my 698 GB hdd, without a GPT.
So I created a GPT,and have now installed Windows 7, on a 80 GB partition.

I haven't run any tests on the hdd as such, it seem to work nice.
Please suggests some tests I could do using standard linux tools, if possible
It will help us benchmark the hdd!

Windows was very bad again and it created two primary partitions,one 79 GB
for the windows, and the other 86 mb for bootloader.

So tomorrow, I will be installing debian on the remaining space.

Now my question is, What should I choose? Logical volume? or Primary Volume?
I think I cannot create more than 4 primary volumes on a hdd, and
since two are already
occupied, I should create
/home, /, /usr and /var all logical volumes. (Choice of partitions on
the basis of discussions above)

Will choosing logical volumes harm any performance on the hdd?

I have also decided to choose xfce as my primary desktop,
unless I get more knowledgeable in using tiling window managers.

Apart from all that I would like to sincerely thank each and everyone of
you, I never felt that I was alone, always cheered up by you guys.
No wonder hdd are cheap in some countries say 100-150 $, but here
in this country, I just could not have afforded an hdd without getting
some credit from others.

So you guys do not know how much happy I am right now, and how much
relieved I am feeling now! Thanks a ton for my support. I can setup my debian
box now and prepare for gsoc! :)


> Do you have a live CD/DVD/USB/SD? You might ask your friend to let you
> download Knoppix, for instance, and burn it to a CD.
>

> If it boots the live/install image, power back down the proper way and
> attach the hard disk that is being recalcitrant. Then watch it like a
> hawk while it boots, to be sure you got the boot priorities in the
> BIOS right.
>
> BIOSses can be recalcitrant, too. It might take several tries to get
> the priorities right.

Thanks Joel, I had never heard of this tool, but luckily for me, the situation
of my hardisk was not so bad,

But I really appreciate the time and effort you guys take to reply to me.

-- 
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

Do you have a live CD/DVD/USB/SD? You might ask your friend to let you
download Knoppix, for instance, and burn it to a CD.

Or the install disk should do, really, if you are comfortable with the
command line.

Go into the BIOS with the drive detached. Set the BIOS to boot to
install media first, whether you are using CD/DVD or a flash device.
Then let it boot the live/install, just to be sure it does. (I'm
thinking it might.)

If it doesn't boot a live CD/DVD/USB/SD image, well, we'll think about
that if it comes to that.

If it boots the live/install image, power back down the proper way and
attach the hard disk that is being recalcitrant. Then watch it like a
hawk while it boots, to be sure you got the boot priorities in the
BIOS right.

BIOSses can be recalcitrant, too. It might take several tries to get
the priorities right.

If it really does hang the system to have the HD plugged in when you
are booting a live image or an install image, given the history you've
described, I'm going to suggest giving it about 10% odds that the HD
was already failing. Not positive, but a possibility.

Joel Rees


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 6:23 AM, Doug  wrote:
> [...]
> I don't understand LVM, but I tried to install some distro just to
> learn about it, and it would only install using LVM, which meant
> that it would only install on the entire hard drive. No partitions,
> no Windows, no nothing. I installed it on a second small h/d, and
> then I found out that nothing on it was accessible from a normal
> Linux installed on a normal file system on sda.  If LVM becomes
> the Linux standard, I will have to find a different OS!
>
> --doug

Odd. I've used LVM on plain Fedora and Debian (and I think Ubuntu)
installs for going on ten years, now. Very useful, although the tools
are a bit counter-intuitive if you're used to DOS-extended partitions.

If you installed the LVM package in the second "normal" Linux, it
should have been easily accessible. You might want to use the GUI
tools at first, so that you don't damage your brain trying to figure
out good defaults for the command-line tools. Use the command-line
tools to see what the GUI tools did after they've done their job.

And remember you have to have a physical volume and then cut the
physical volume into logical volumes, and if you only have one hard
drive that is dedicated to LVM, you should only need one each of the
physical and logical volume groups. (I've tended to think of the
volume groups as LVM equivalent of RAID, but that's an
over-simplification.)

-- 
Joel Rees

Be careful where you see conspiracy.
Look first in your own heart.

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 8:09 AM, Lisi Reisz  wrote:
> [...]
> And, sorry to seem slow, but why would a messed up hard drive prevent
> access to the BIOS?  Now a faulty motherboard could, and it is not
> unheard of for repairs to fail to function.

While there is a possibility that he's taken the covers off without
proper precautions against static electricity and fried the controller
in a way that say, ties an IRQ active or something, I'm guessing that
he's simply not used to the boot sequence and where it hangs is a bit
past the BIOS.

And, as we know about people who are trained to work on MSWindows,
they are trained not to fix anything that's too hard. Time is money,
etc.

-- 
Joel Rees

Be careful where you see conspiracy.
Look first in your own heart.

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-10 Thread Joe

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 17:24:41 -0500
Doug  wrote:

> 
> I remember seeing you or someone writing that multiple partitions
> are not useful. I respectfully disagree. Unless someone is storing a
> humongous amount of files on their system, there should be lots of
> space available on a 1TB drive for Windows and two or three other
> systems. 

Yes, no argument there, the question wasn't about total space or
multi-booting, but whether multiple partitions within a single Linux
filesystem were advisable, and if so, which directories and how big.

My contention was that it was vital on a server (and I normally have a
spare one-partition installation of the same OS version on a server, as
well as several partitions within the main OS) but of limited use on a
workstation, and not worth the inevitable wrong guesses about future
needs.

-- 
Joe

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Zenaan Harkness

On 2/10/14, Schlacta, Christ  wrote:
>> 3) Use ZFS.  Allocate the drive as a single zpool.  You can then create

>> I've tried all three.  For Linux, using LVM is easy and can be done

>  I use zfs with debian wheezy, and am migrating to using zfs almost

> ZFS is awesome, and I've never lost any data using ZFS, despite some bad
> situations including marginal drives and even drive failure.  I highly
> recommend this solution for everyone who's competent enough to understand
> the procedures involved and the achievable benefits. Unfortunately, due to
> the proprietary nature of the CDDL,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDL

CDDL is FSF approved, so it is definitely a "Free-Software" (libre)
license. It's just that it's not GPL compatible, which is unfortunate,
but I wouldn't worry about that - just install ('auto build' or
whatever) the ZFS module.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Schlacta, Christ

>
> 3) Use ZFS.  Allocate the drive as a single zpool.  You can then create
>zfs volumes for all the separate bits.  However, you don't have the
>space wastage issues since all the data is in a single pool, and
>you can adjust the size allocations/quotas on demand for each
>individual volume (or leave them unset to give them as much space as
>they can get).  Needs a kernel patch for the zfs driver.  With
>kFreeBSD you can do this natively.  It has all sorts of great
>features which I won't go into here.
>
> I've tried all three.  For Linux, using LVM is easy and can be done
> in the installer.  If you reinstall you can keep the LVs you want and
> wipe/delete the rest.  For kFreeBSD, you can install directly onto ZFS;
> I've been using it for kFreeBSD and native FreeBSD installs, and it's
> the best of the lot--hopefully Debian can offer native support for
> Linux at some point [currently needs patching, and the patches don't
> work with current 3.12 kernels]
>
>
 I use zfs with debian wheezy, and am migrating to using zfs almost
exclusively for my local deployments.  The "kernel patches" are actually
just an add-on module that builds and installs from a repo maintained for
wheezy, which uses DKMS to manage the actual kernel module.

As for not working with 3.12,   that's a known issue, and a patch is in
head.  The ZFS team is closing a few more bugs and preparing a new release
of ZFS soon, which will build against 3.12.

There's currently discussion on one of the debian lists (I forget which)
about removing the possibility of having nearly-native zfs support in
debian-installer  I'm wasn't subscribed to the list at the time of the last
post to this thread, so I can't reply to it.  Unfortunately, due to the
nature of the CDDL (The license ZFS is under), No Linux distro will ever be
able to deploy native binary modules with the installer or in default
repositories any time soon.

ZFS is awesome, and I've never lost any data using ZFS, despite some bad
situations including marginal drives and even drive failure.  I highly
recommend this solution for everyone who's competent enough to understand
the procedures involved and the achievable benefits. Unfortunately, due to
the proprietary nature of the CDDL, I don't foresee this being a solution
"for the masses" any time soon.

Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Doug


On 02/09/2014 05:04 PM, Joe wrote:

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 16:23:27 -0500
Doug  wrote:



I don't understand LVM, but I tried to install some distro just to
learn about it, and it would only install using LVM, which meant
that it would only install on the entire hard drive. No partitions,
no Windows, no nothing. I installed it on a second small h/d, and
then I found out that nothing on it was accessible from a normal
Linux installed on a normal file system on sda.  If LVM becomes
the Linux standard, I will have to find a different OS!


Sounds like a bee-in-the-bonnet distro. Normally, LVM volumes map to
partitions, and as long as you have the LVM packages installed on any
Linux system, it will be able to read LVM systems.

As you see here, my main workstation has an LVM partition and a normal
one. I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about grub, having had several
run-ins with it on various machines, and I trust it about as far as I
can throw the average office building. Hence the separate /boot
partition. Grub does understand LVM natively, but if one day it decides
to play dumb, it is more accessible on its own partition, and can be
more easily held to account with the software equivalent of an axe.

Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *  63  979964  489951   83  Linux
/dev/sda2  979965   625137344   312078690   8e  Linux LVM

Filesystem   1K-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1   489900 79644410256  17% /boot
/dev/mapper/first-root 4882276   1308524   3573752  27% /
/dev/mapper/first-backup  97649748   4991160  92658588   6% /backup
/dev/mapper/first-home52427196  27603080  24824116  53% /home
/dev/mapper/first-tmp  4882276 32860   4849416   1% /tmp
/dev/mapper/first-usr 19529128   8819648  10709480  46% /usr
/dev/mapper/first-var  9764560   1261076   8503484  13% /var

In the context of the actual topic here, I've already said that I don't
think multiple partitions are all that useful on a workstation, so I'm
not necessarily advocating this particular scheme.


It was not a weird distro. I don't remember whether it was
RedHat, or SUSE or Fedora, but I'm pretty sure it was one of them.
I found that there is something called lvm2 in my repos, and I
installed it; I don't remember if I still have the other distro on
the second drive or if I blew it away (probable!). But it did
*not* respect available partitions--it wanted the whole
verdammt drive!

I usually use a distro that uses classic grub, and I've never had
a problem with it. I can even boot other distros installed on the
drive from grub.

I remember seeing you or someone writing that multiple partitions
are not useful. I respectfully disagree. Unless someone is storing a
humongous amount of files on their system, there should be lots of
space available on a 1TB drive for Windows and two or three other
systems. (After losing a slew of music downloads after a drive failure,
I no longer store anything like that only on a drive; I copy the files
to a CD. Unfortunately, all those downloads were from the
free system that is no longer available, and so most of the songs
aren't either.)

--doug



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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Joe

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 16:23:27 -0500
Doug  wrote:

> >
> I don't understand LVM, but I tried to install some distro just to
> learn about it, and it would only install using LVM, which meant
> that it would only install on the entire hard drive. No partitions,
> no Windows, no nothing. I installed it on a second small h/d, and
> then I found out that nothing on it was accessible from a normal
> Linux installed on a normal file system on sda.  If LVM becomes
> the Linux standard, I will have to find a different OS!
> 

Sounds like a bee-in-the-bonnet distro. Normally, LVM volumes map to
partitions, and as long as you have the LVM packages installed on any
Linux system, it will be able to read LVM systems.

As you see here, my main workstation has an LVM partition and a normal
one. I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about grub, having had several
run-ins with it on various machines, and I trust it about as far as I
can throw the average office building. Hence the separate /boot
partition. Grub does understand LVM natively, but if one day it decides
to play dumb, it is more accessible on its own partition, and can be
more easily held to account with the software equivalent of an axe.

   Device Boot  Start End  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *  63  979964  489951   83  Linux
/dev/sda2  979965   625137344   312078690   8e  Linux LVM

Filesystem   1K-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1   489900 79644410256  17% /boot
/dev/mapper/first-root 4882276   1308524   3573752  27% /
/dev/mapper/first-backup  97649748   4991160  92658588   6% /backup
/dev/mapper/first-home52427196  27603080  24824116  53% /home
/dev/mapper/first-tmp  4882276 32860   4849416   1% /tmp
/dev/mapper/first-usr 19529128   8819648  10709480  46% /usr
/dev/mapper/first-var  9764560   1261076   8503484  13% /var

In the context of the actual topic here, I've already said that I don't
think multiple partitions are all that useful on a workstation, so I'm
not necessarily advocating this particular scheme.

-- 
Joe

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Doug


On 02/09/2014 04:05 PM, Roger Leigh wrote:

/snip/

On W
On Linux, there are three possibilities which mitigate all these
things:

1) Use LVM.  You can use the entire drive as a single physical volume
(PV) and then carve it up into separate logical volumes (LVs).  This
allows exactly the same strategy as above, but you can start with
the minimum needed size for each partition and leave the remaining
space unallocated.  Should you need additional space for any of the
volumes, you can just extend it on demand.  Downside: space allocation
is manual and some degree of space wastage still occurs.

2) Use Btrfs.  You can have a single Btrfs volume, and then use
subvolumes for all the separate parts, divided up exactly as above.
The subvolumes may be independently snapshotted, backed up and
preserved.  The rootfs itself can be a subvolume.  The main problem
here is that Btrfs isn't production ready, so I can't recommend it
unless you don't care about your data.

3) Use ZFS.  Allocate the drive as a single zpool.  You can then create
zfs volumes for all the separate bits.  However, you don't have the
space wastage issues since all the data is in a single pool, and
you can adjust the size allocations/quotas on demand for each
individual volume (or leave them unset to give them as much space as
they can get).  Needs a kernel patch for the zfs driver.  With
kFreeBSD you can do this natively.  It has all sorts of great
features which I won't go into here.

I've tried all three.  For Linux, using LVM is easy and can be done
in the installer.  If you reinstall you can keep the LVs you want and
wipe/delete the rest.

/snip/


Regards,
Roger


I don't understand LVM, but I tried to install some distro just to
learn about it, and it would only install using LVM, which meant
that it would only install on the entire hard drive. No partitions,
no Windows, no nothing. I installed it on a second small h/d, and
then I found out that nothing on it was accessible from a normal
Linux installed on a normal file system on sda.  If LVM becomes
the Linux standard, I will have to find a different OS!

--doug


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Roger Leigh

On Wed, Feb 05, 2014 at 12:31:06PM -0600, John Hasler wrote:
> 
> yaro wrote:
> > Separate /usr is unneeded and actually complicates boot for little benefit. 
> 
> It allows you to mount it read-only (or not at all when there's a
> problem).  It only complicates boot due to the practice of putting stuff
> that belongs under / under /usr.

Nowadays you can just have / readonly so /usr doesn't need to kept
separate.

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Roger Leigh

On Wed, Feb 05, 2014 at 08:27:15AM -0800, David Guntner wrote:
> 
> It's not just a matter of capacity.  I've got a 1TB drive, and I still
> partition them into separate sections:
> 
> > $ df -k
> > Filesystem 1K-blocks Used 
> > Available Use% Mounted on
> > rootfs   1818872   299704   
> > 1426704  18% /
> > udev   102400   
> >   10240   0% /dev
> > tmpfs 30954012812   
> >  296728   5% /run
> > /dev/disk/by-uuid/36f6b922-0e9a-4ce5-aeee-c92104fa2428   1818872   299704   
> > 1426704  18% /
> > tmpfs   51204   
> >5116   1% /run/lock
> > tmpfs10495600   
> > 1049560   0% /run/shm
> > /dev/sda1 13722120211   
> >  109689  16% /boot
> > /dev/sda12  67284600 16339432  
> > 47527264  26% /home
> > /dev/sdb1  307665016 40081124 
> > 251955400  14% /backup
> > /dev/sda9   28835836   351612  
> > 27019444   2% /opt
> > /dev/sda6288259269908   
> > 2666252   3% /tmp
> > /dev/sda7   28835836  7400256  
> > 19970800  28% /usr
> > /dev/sda8   48060296 15360908  
> > 30258020  34% /usr/local
> > /dev/sda10  28835836  1455184  
> > 25915872   6% /var
> > /dev/sda11  28835836   179364  
> > 27191692   1% /var/spool

While this works, it's suboptimal for a number of reasons, primarily
being inflexible and space wasting.  It's inflexible because should
your needs change (e.g. you run out of space on /opt or /var), you
can't do anything about it other than hairy repartitioning involving
backup and restore of the data.  It's also vastly more complex than
it really needs to be.

I've been bitten by this in the past.  Firstly, when my fixed size
/boot prevented kernel upgrades because two images and initrds would
no longer fit (and the sizes keep getting bigger).  Secondly, when
the rootfs got too small and wouldn't allow package install/upgrade
despite having gigabytes of space on /usr; there's no need to
separate them, and it's much less likely to cause problems if they
are together.  So you're caught between two bad situations:
preallocating sufficient space that you won't be caught out by
size requirements increasing over time, and overallocation of space
which is then wasted pointlessly.

On Linux, there are three possibilities which mitigate all these
things:

1) Use LVM.  You can use the entire drive as a single physical volume
   (PV) and then carve it up into separate logical volumes (LVs).  This
   allows exactly the same strategy as above, but you can start with
   the minimum needed size for each partition and leave the remaining
   space unallocated.  Should you need additional space for any of the
   volumes, you can just extend it on demand.  Downside: space allocation
   is manual and some degree of space wastage still occurs.

2) Use Btrfs.  You can have a single Btrfs volume, and then use
   subvolumes for all the separate parts, divided up exactly as above.
   The subvolumes may be independently snapshotted, backed up and
   preserved.  The rootfs itself can be a subvolume.  The main problem
   here is that Btrfs isn't production ready, so I can't recommend it
   unless you don't care about your data.

3) Use ZFS.  Allocate the drive as a single zpool.  You can then create
   zfs volumes for all the separate bits.  However, you don't have the
   space wastage issues since all the data is in a single pool, and
   you can adjust the size allocations/quotas on demand for each
   individual volume (or leave them unset to give them as much space as
   they can get).  Needs a kernel patch for the zfs driver.  With
   kFreeBSD you can do this natively.  It has all sorts of great
   features which I won't go into here.

I've tried all three.  For Linux, using LVM is easy and can be done
in the installer.  If you reinstall you can keep the LVs you want and
wipe/delete the rest.  For kFreeBSD, you can install directly onto ZFS;
I've been using it for kFreeBSD and native FreeBSD installs, and it's
the best of the lot--hopefully Debian can offer native support for
Linux at some point [currently needs patching, and the patches don't
work with current 3.12 kernels]

Regards,
Roger

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Jerry Stuckle

On 2/9/2014 2:57 AM, Schlacta, Christ wrote:

On Feb 8, 2014 10:27 PM, "David Christensen" mailto:dpchr...@holgerdanske.com>> wrote:
 >
 > On 02/08/2014 09:54 PM, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
 >>
 >> You mean to say, I should remove my hdd, boot my laptop using a usb,
 >> and then connect the hdd live into the laptop?
 >> Can it further damage the hdd?
 >
 >
 > YES!
 >
 > And, damage the motherboard.

No.

Incorrect.

Sata supports hotplugging. The worst that will happen is some
controllers will not recognize devices after hotplugging due to lack of
firmware configured detect devices after an initial post bus scan.

Only if the device and controller fully support hotplugging (surprise - 
some DO NOT!) AND the drive is working properly.  Clearly the drive is 
NOT working properly.

 >
 >
 >
 >> I should give this a try!
 >
 >
 > NO!

It depends. If your hard drive is externally accessible it can't hurt
anything. If your hard drive is under panels that also protect ram or
any other pcbs, you generally shouldn't run system with those covers
missing.

Again, incorrect.  If the drive is damaged electronically, ANYTHING it 
is plugged into can be damaged.  And if either the drive or the 
controller do not support SATA hotplugging, either (or both) can be 
damaged by hotplugging the device.

 >
 >
 > If you want to hot-plug hard drives, everything has to be designed to
do that.  Typically, that means servers with RAID cards, HDD backplane/
cages, and rated HDD's.

Completely wrong. Wikipedia has it in fairly simple words:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Hotplug

Again see above.

Also the first twenty or so articles on Google all confirm at a glance
that hotswap is supported by sata intrinsically, and any problems are
the result of software or firmware bugs failing to trigger hotswap
events properly.

Please to not spread bad or wrong information.

Yes, please do not do so.

Do you believe EVERYTHING you read on the internet?

Jerry

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Celejar

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 01:12:06 -0800
David Christensen  wrote:

...

> diagnostic tool.  Again, beware that bad HDD electronics can damage 
> whatever you plug the HDD into, so choose your Guinea pigs carefully:

Never heard that before, but I'm certainly no expert on such things. Do
have further information on this?

Celejar


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Chris Bannister

On Sun, Feb 09, 2014 at 11:24:54AM +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> > What happens if you post the laptop, then engage the hard drive after you
> > boot into a Linux live usb?
> 
> You mean to say, I should remove my hdd, boot my laptop using a usb,
> and then connect the hdd live into the laptop?
> 
> Can it further damage the hdd? I should give this a try!

Don't mess with your laptop with the power still on. I wouldn't
recommend plugging in a HDD with the power on!


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who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread David Christensen


On 02/08/2014 11:55 PM, Anubhav Yadav wrote:

I wanted to partition the hdd,but now my hdd has been corrupt ...


My next step would be to download, burn, and run the HDD manufacturer's 
diagnostic tool.  Again, beware that bad HDD electronics can damage 
whatever you plug the HDD into, so choose your Guinea pigs carefully:


- If the computer won't POST or the tool  won't run with the HDD in an 
external case/ dock, try another cable, case/ dock, and/or computer. 
Try new and old computers and/or equipment.  Think carefully before 
trying an internal connection.  If you can't get the tool to work after 
trying many combinations, then the HDD electronics are toast.  Get 
another drive.


- If/ when you can run the tool, perform all available tests.  Next, 
regardless of the test results, wipe the entire drive (fill with zeros; 
750 GB will take a long time).  Use a bootable Linux CD or USB drive and 
dd if the HDD diagnostic tool doesn't have this feature (some lack it). 
 Then run the tool and all the tests again.  If the drive passes 100%, 
you're in luck.  If not, get another drive.



If you end up getting a non-new replacement drive, perform the above 
steps on it.



Once you have a known good drive, plug it into your laptop and see what 
happens.  If it works, you're back to the partitioning question.  If 
not, the next step will be to trouble-shoot the laptop.




I appreciate the fact that you are taking time and replying me. Means
a lot. Thank you!


YW  :-)


David


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Anubhav Yadav

> Have you checked the OP's hard drive and friend's laptop for SATA hot-plug
> interoperability specification compliance?

Although I am a CS student, I should better wait, and not put my friend's hdd
in jeopardy. I will report what happens when I get my hands on the
casing and connect
the broken hdd to a debian box.

-- 
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread David Christensen


On 02/08/2014 11:57 PM, Schlacta, Christ wrote:

... panels that also protect ram or any other pcbs, you generally
shouldn't run system with those covers missing.


+1



Wikipedia has it in fairly simple words:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Hotplug


"The Serial ATA Spec includes logic for SATA device hotplugging.
Devices and motherboards that meet the interoperability
specification are capable of hot plugging.

Have you checked the OP's hard drive and friend's laptop for SATA 
hot-plug interoperability specification compliance?



David


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread Anubhav Yadav

> Understand that if the HDD has bad electronics, anything you plug it into
> could be damaged.

> Do you have an anti-static wrist strap and spare anti-static bags?

No, But I got myself a meeting with my friend who runs a laptop repairing shop,
who is willing to give me access to his hdd casing.
I will take my girlfriend's dell laptop, I have already installed debian in it.

Hopefully I manage to get the hdd repartitioned. Will keep everyone posted.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-09 Thread David Christensen


On 02/08/2014 10:29 PM, Anubhav Yadav wrote:

Now, If I remove my hdd and plug it in the dell
laptop and then boot the laptop?


Understand that if the HDD has bad electronics, anything you plug it 
into could be damaged.



I always keep an old desktop machine around as my "workbench".  If I 
smoke a HDD port, the motherboard, or a whole machine, that would be 
inconvenient, but not a show-stopper.  A workbench, a cache of used/ 
spare parts, and a few of the right tools make trouble-shooting far easier.



Do you have an anti-static wrist strap and spare anti-static bags?


David


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-08 Thread Schlacta, Christ

On Feb 8, 2014 10:27 PM, "David Christensen" 
wrote:
>
> On 02/08/2014 09:54 PM, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
>>
>> You mean to say, I should remove my hdd, boot my laptop using a usb,
>> and then connect the hdd live into the laptop?
>> Can it further damage the hdd?
>
>
> YES!
>
> And, damage the motherboard.

No.

Sata supports hotplugging. The worst that will happen is some controllers
will not recognize devices after hotplugging due to lack of firmware
configured detect devices after an initial post bus scan.
>
>
>
>> I should give this a try!
>
>
> NO!

It depends. If your hard drive is externally accessible it can't hurt
anything. If your hard drive is under panels that also protect ram or any
other pcbs, you generally shouldn't run system with those covers missing.
>
>
> If you want to hot-plug hard drives, everything has to be designed to do
that.  Typically, that means servers with RAID cards, HDD backplane/ cages,
and rated HDD's.

Completely wrong. Wikipedia has it in fairly simple words:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Hotplug

Also the first twenty or so articles on Google all confirm at a glance that
hotswap is supported by sata intrinsically, and any problems are the result
of software or firmware bugs failing to trigger hotswap events properly.

Please to not spread bad or wrong information.

>
>
> David
>
>
>
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>

Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

> YES!
>
> And, damage the motherboard.

> NO!

I was waiting for someone to reply. Thanks!
Now, If I remove my hdd and plug it in the dell
laptop and then boot the laptop? Can I try that?
And then maybe connect a live usb to that?
Will it work?

-- 
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-08 Thread David Christensen


On 02/08/2014 09:54 PM, Anubhav Yadav wrote:

You mean to say, I should remove my hdd, boot my laptop using a usb,
and then connect the hdd live into the laptop?
Can it further damage the hdd?


YES!

And, damage the motherboard.



I should give this a try!


NO!


If you want to hot-plug hard drives, everything has to be designed to do 
that.  Typically, that means servers with RAID cards, HDD backplane/ 
cages, and rated HDD's.



David


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

> What happens if you post the laptop, then engage the hard drive after you
> boot into a Linux live usb?

You mean to say, I should remove my hdd, boot my laptop using a usb,
and then connect the hdd live into the laptop?

Can it further damage the hdd? I should give this a try!

-- 
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

> Don't give up yet.  Have you a friend who could let you look at your
> hard-drive yourself?

I have got a friend's laptop (Dell) right now in my room, so I am thinking of
removing my hdd and putting that hdd on the dell laptop and trying to
get into a linux boot using the hdd.

>
> And, sorry to seem slow, but why would a messed up hard drive prevent
> access to the BIOS?  Now a faulty motherboard could, and it is not
> unheard of for repairs to fail to function.

If I remove the hdd and boot the laptop, I can go into the bios easily.

> Heartbreaking.  I really feel for you.  But don't give up yet.
> Formulate a question or series of questions using the advice that
> David gave you and see what this list can come up with.  There are
> those here who are quite simply magicians.

Yes I agree, guys here can simply just do anything at all.
Truly ingenious! I will keep on reporting what I am doing.
Thanks
-- 
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-08 Thread Schlacta, Christ

On Feb 8, 2014 12:26 PM, "Anubhav Yadav"  wrote:
>
>
> On 9 Feb 2014 01:41, "Schlacta, Christ"  wrote:
> >
> > If it was a Windows system they connected your drive to, they probably
didn't actually give it a good checking . A new hard drive can be had for
between $50 and $150 depending on your needs. Also, try booting the system
from live usb and see what it says about the hard drive. Check dmesg, and
look for /dev/sda and /dev/sdb . If you find either of those nodes, run
smart tests on them. The partition table on your drive is probably just
messed up, and that's a much easier fix than a new hard drive.
>
> The only problem is when I boot my laptop with hardisk in it, it stucks
on the splash screen and I cannot boot into any live Linux distro.  Cannot
even enter BIOS

What happens if you post the laptop, then engage the hard drive after you
boot into a Linux live usb?

Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-08 Thread Lisi Reisz

On Saturday 08 February 2014 10:21:07 Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> Something really bad happened. I went to format all my partitions
> from the windows 8 installation menu (Bootable usb) and when I went
> to format boot partition of windows 100 mb,the installer hanged
> (typical of windows) After waiting for say half an hour, I
> hard-rebooted the laptop and it was stuck on the bios splash
> screen. I could do nothing, could not enter bios,nor could enter
> the boot menu.

I have a Windows free household, but I know well that not everyone is 
so lucky.  You have my full sympathy.

> So I took my laptop to the Asus service center. They connected my
> hardisk to a casing and the hardisk was not even detected on their
> computers.
> So they confidently said that your hardisk has been damaged and no
> matter what you do, you cannot revive it. You can get a new hardisk
> for blah blah money.

Don't give up yet.  Have you a friend who could let you look at your 
hard-drive yourself? 

And, sorry to seem slow, but why would a messed up hard drive prevent 
access to the BIOS?  Now a faulty motherboard could, and it is not 
unheard of for repairs to fail to function.

> I am so badly screwed. After waiting for two months to get my
> laptop back (motherboard replacement) I am so badly screwed. I so
> badly wanted to prepare for gsoc, literally cried.

Heartbreaking.  I really feel for you.  But don't give up yet.  
Formulate a question or series of questions using the advice that 
David gave you and see what this list can come up with.  There are 
those here who are quite simply magicians.

Nil desperandum.

Lisi

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-08 Thread David Christensen


On 02/08/2014 02:21 AM, Anubhav Yadav wrote:

Something really bad happened. ...


No problem.  Part of the FOSS hobby is breaking your toy and then having 
to fix it.  :-)



First, looking back on this thread, I see a meta-problem.  Please read 
these (adjust for context):


http://www.emailreplies.com/

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/freebsd-questions/


http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/mailing-list-faq/article.html#bikeshed


Have you done this?

On 02/05/2014 12:11 AM, David Christensen wrote:
> Most major hard drive manufacturers offer drive diagnostic tools.
> Download the tool for your brand of HDD and use it to check your
> drive. (I prefer a stand-alone bootable ISO image that I can burn to
> CD.)


David


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

> Someone asked how much RAM you have. How much? 1G is not enough with Gnome 3.
>
> More than 4G is more than is necessary under many "normal" loads, but
> if you don't have 4G, 4G is reasonable. If you can add memory or
> replace what you have and have the money to spare.

I have 8 GB ram :)

> What are Neo and Workstation for? (May I ask?)

They contained movies and PDF and were windows partitions and will be going off.

> Did that tool also have diagnostics? Was it the ASUS provided tool?
> Did you run some tool to check that your HD is not having smartdrive
> issues? (Ergo, not dying an untimely death.)
No it just gave me the copying speed of HDD. Its a standard linux
utility but I forgot the name.

> Suggestions from me (and no reasons to trust me more than anyone else, 
> perhaps):
>
> / (root partition) should be at least large enough to handle a /var
> gone out of control if /var doesn't mount, or if you don't have a
> separate /var. Minimum 4G (base ten or base two, either way). I'd go
> with 8G, since you're starting with a drive bigger than 120G. Larger
> if you do choose to combine /usr and /var, and so forth, with the root
> partition.
>
> /etc? I've seen recommendations to separate /etc as a partition. It's
> a bit of a trap for a home-use machine, don't do it this time around.
> Keep /etc with /.
>
> /bin? /sbin? /ilb? Keep these combined with / unless you like to
> confuse the kernel when it i trying to boot and can't find any of the
> standard tools or even some of the libraries it needs to boot even to
> single-user mode these days.
>
> /usr? There are strange things that happen to Red Hat (Fedora, etc.)
> style machines during boot that indicate against /usr being separate.
> I've been bitten by them on Fedora, which is one of the reasons I am
> using Debian now.
>
> I keep /usr separate because it tends to change a lot when you install
> and remove packages. It's that simple.
>
> However, you don't need more than 32G for /usr unless you really go
> crazy installing (literally) every package available, and installing a
> lot of packages is one good way to slow your machine down on boot and
> login. (Of course, if you don't install lots of stuff, you never get
> to play with it and discover new tools. :-/)
>
> Well, be a bit careful what you install beyond what you know you
> need, but not too careful. Anyway, 32G for /usr should not be
> overkill, and won't be too time consuming when it has to be fsck-ed.
>
> fsck demonstrates one good reason to keep partitions small. Large
> partitions take longer on fsck and similar maintenance.
>
> And if you ever have to search for lost text files with testdisk or
> such, larger than 32G can be a real, serious show stopper. (I gave up
> when I lost two-days' work to a bad Makefile just two weeks back,
> because the files were text files and too small for testdisk to see in
> the partition they were in. Could have resorted to lower-level
> techniques like grep /dev/sda3  or hexdump -C | grep, but I decided it
> would be faster to use my gray-matter and type the stuff in from
> scratch. It was. (First time took two days to produce the files,
> second time took four hours, and was good for checking my work.
> Programming is like that in a lot of cases. 8-o)
>

I also like to be a good programmer :)


> Unfortunately, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/lib may contain stuff
> that the boot-up process wants to use, and may thus cause problems if
> they can't be mounted. As I say, I saw that on Fedora. Not on Debian.
> That says something about the differences between the two, I think.
>
> (Fedora folks keep themselves busy inventing solutions to problems of
> their own making, it seems to me. That's okay for them. Maybe someday
> in the distant future, the side-tour on systemd will bear meaningful
> fruit. I don't expect it to happen this year or next, and that's
> another reason I'm using Debian now. They can have their fun. I need
> to focus on other things, myself.)
>
> So, for Debian, I recommend a separate /usr, 32G since you have it.
>
> /tmp? Some say it is not used any more. I say give it at least 8G. 16G
> since you have a big HD to start with. I've used it on odd occasions,
> and making it too small is bad news. Keeping it separate, so that you
> can separate the stuff that changes from the stuff that doesn't is
> still a good idea.
>
> /var? Similar to my advice on /tmp, separate partition to separate the
> stuff that changes a lot from the stuff that doesn't change as much.
>
> But /var tends to stay around, where /tmp is supposed to be cleared
> (or clear-able) on boot. So, I'd recommend 16G or even 32G for /var.
>
> /var gets really hammered on system updates. /var/log gets filled up
> quickly when things go south.
>
> And there is /var/tmp which gets used more than /tmp these days. (Both
> still get used, even though there are those who claim that ramdisk
> temporary files make more sense. Such arguments tend to ignore certain
> real-world issue

Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

Something really bad happened. I went to format all my partitions from
the windows 8 installation menu (Bootable usb) and when I went to
format boot partition of windows 100 mb,the installer hanged (typical
of windows) After waiting for say half an hour, I hard-rebooted the
laptop and it was stuck on the bios splash screen. I could do nothing,
could not enter bios,nor could enter the boot menu.

So I took my laptop to the Asus service center. They connected my
hardisk to a casing and the hardisk was not even detected on their
computers.
So they confidently said that your hardisk has been damaged and no
matter what you do, you cannot revive it. You can get a new hardisk
for blah blah money.

I am so badly screwed. After waiting for two months to get my laptop
back (motherboard replacement) I am so badly screwed. I so badly
wanted to prepare for gsoc, literally cried.

Thanks a lot everyone for taking out their precious time and replying
so beautifully to me. So thankful to everyone!


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-07 Thread Chris Bannister

On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 09:50:21PM +1100, Scott Ferguson wrote:
> On 06/02/14 21:32, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:
> > I meant an example of stuff which should be in / but are in fact in /usr.
> 
> Sorry. I'm curious about that too.

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=%2Fusr+site%3Alists.debian.org%2Fdebian-devel

For a start:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/10/threads.html#00157

-- 
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who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-07 Thread Chris Bannister

On Sat, Feb 08, 2014 at 12:27:55AM +, Klaus wrote:
> 
> On 07/02/14 23:42, Chris Bannister wrote:
> >On Fri, Feb 07, 2014 at 10:38:36AM +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> >>I face a question now:
> >>1) Should I take time to learn a new twm, or should I install both twm and 
> >>xfce.
> >apt-cache show twm, there is only one! :)
> >
> 
> Ah, Friday night

We're way ahead of you guys! :)

> apt-cache search twm !

Eeee-Arrrgg! What happened to "Tom's Window Manager"? 

http://www.americantrails.org/resources/ManageMaintain/rulesrec.html
(sorry about the oxymoron, it was the first reference I found.)

e.g.
http://whatculture.com/tv/tv-debate-the-british-series-vs-the-american-season.php


-- 
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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-07 Thread Klaus



On 07/02/14 23:42, Chris Bannister wrote:

On Fri, Feb 07, 2014 at 10:38:36AM +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:

I face a question now:
1) Should I take time to learn a new twm, or should I install both twm and xfce.

apt-cache show twm, there is only one! :)



Ah, Friday night
apt-cache search twm !


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-07 Thread Chris Bannister

On Fri, Feb 07, 2014 at 10:38:36AM +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> I face a question now:
> 1) Should I take time to learn a new twm, or should I install both twm and 
> xfce.

apt-cache show twm, there is only one! :)

-- 
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who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-07 Thread Joel Rees

butsu butsu butsu butsu ...

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Anubhav Yadav  wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> I have an Asus laptop, with 720 gigs hardisk and i5 processor.
> Right now I have a dual boot of Windoze (only for playing fifa
> and assassins creed) and debian wheezy 64 bit.

Someone suggested VMs, and I'll second that suggestion, except reverse
the idea about making MSWindows the primary domain.

Don't mean offense to whoever posted that, but it does not make any
sense to me. Use the system you have confidence in as your primary
domain.

You should not be using the primary domain on a day-to-day basis, BTW.
Any way you look at it, if you're doing VMs, you want the system you
work in to be a VM instance. makes things much easier to manage. But
the advice below does not fully take that kind of thing into account.

Do you have install media for your MSWindows? (The answer to that also
changes some of the rest of the advice ever-so-slightly.)

> Debian takes a lots of time for booting up and some folks on irc
> said that I should be trying systemd. I did that but there was no
> improvement. So some people also suggested that my partitions
> are somehow not right.

IRC can get good information and bad information. Same here, of course.

30 seconds after login with Gnome 3 is not that bad, especially with a
5400 RPM notebook-class HD.

Someone asked how much RAM you have. How much? 1G is not enough with Gnome 3.

More than 4G is more than is necessary under many "normal" loads, but
if you don't have 4G, 4G is reasonable. If you can add memory or
replace what you have and have the money to spare.

The reason that "4G" of RAM is based on powers of two where "720G" of
HD is based on powers of ten has to do with the way RAM is laid out in
the semiconductor and the way tracks are laid out on disks, BTW. (Not
that you seem to be worried about the distinction between GB and GiB
in the modern parlance of marketing.)

> So now since I am about to partition I would like to know what should
> be the ideal partitioning scheme.
>
> Here is the screenshot of my current partitions.
> http://i.imgur.com/YI4a1oU.png

What are Neo and Workstation for? (May I ask?)

Some of the numbers look like a bit of overkill in some respects, but
they shouldn't really be causes of slow boots (in and of themselves).

The sizes, mixed with other issues could, however, induce issues.

> There was a tool which gave the read-write speeds of my hdd,
> that was mentioned by the guys in irc, I cant remember now, and
> the speeds were very low.

Did that tool also have diagnostics? Was it the ASUS provided tool?
Did you run some tool to check that your HD is not having smartdrive
issues? (Ergo, not dying an untimely death.)

> So these are the questions:
>
> 1) What partitioning scheme should I choose now, If I want to have
> /home, /var, /usr, /tmp on different partitions and I just want a windoze
> partition of 50-60 gb.

Suggestions from me (and no reasons to trust me more than anyone else, perhaps):

/ (root partition) should be at least large enough to handle a /var
gone out of control if /var doesn't mount, or if you don't have a
separate /var. Minimum 4G (base ten or base two, either way). I'd go
with 8G, since you're starting with a drive bigger than 120G. Larger
if you do choose to combine /usr and /var, and so forth, with the root
partition.

/etc? I've seen recommendations to separate /etc as a partition. It's
a bit of a trap for a home-use machine, don't do it this time around.
Keep /etc with /.

/bin? /sbin? /ilb? Keep these combined with / unless you like to
confuse the kernel when it i trying to boot and can't find any of the
standard tools or even some of the libraries it needs to boot even to
single-user mode these days.

/usr? There are strange things that happen to Red Hat (Fedora, etc.)
style machines during boot that indicate against /usr being separate.
I've been bitten by them on Fedora, which is one of the reasons I am
using Debian now.

I keep /usr separate because it tends to change a lot when you install
and remove packages. It's that simple.

However, you don't need more than 32G for /usr unless you really go
crazy installing (literally) every package available, and installing a
lot of packages is one good way to slow your machine down on boot and
login. (Of course, if you don't install lots of stuff, you never get
to play with it and discover new tools. :-/)

Well, be a bit careful what you install beyond what you know you
need, but not too careful. Anyway, 32G for /usr should not be
overkill, and won't be too time consuming when it has to be fsck-ed.

fsck demonstrates one good reason to keep partitions small. Large
partitions take longer on fsck and similar maintenance.

And if you ever have to search for lost text files with testdisk or
such, larger than 32G can be a real, serious show stopper. (I gave up
when I lost two-days' work to a bad Makefile just two weeks back,
because the files were text files and too small

Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-07 Thread berenger . morel




Le 07.02.2014 06:08, Anubhav Yadav a écrit :
Simply that, if you intend to take i3, you will have to learn to 
think
differently. My opinion is that tiling wm are far more efficient 
than
classic stacking window managers, but it indeed changed my habits. 
Since
then, for example, I do not use any file explorer, they are slower 
than
command line for most things. Of course, you still can use file 
explorers...



So you use only command line for navigation files? Or do you use a
command line
file explorer?


I tried mc. I did not liked it, so I only use bash.

Now, i3 is the one I choose because it did not implied a lot of 
learning,
it's configuration file is really clean: no need to learn any 
programming
language there, but facts is that it lacks some features against 
more
hard-core twm, for example some others have layouts: new windows 
does not
just split current container, they are moved in a precise place of 
the

screen.
But anyway, here is a quote from i3-wm.org: "i3 is primarily 
targeted at
advanced users and developers.". Gnome users might do not feel good 
there.
It provide only a window manager, no menu, no desktop, etc. You will 
have to

install those yourself.


All I need is a good network manager. A good notifier so that I get
notified of
xchat mentions or usb plugged in notifications.


Wicd works like a charm, but I only use it when I need to connect to 
non protected wifi network, because I do not know how to configure by 
hand those networks :)
About notification notifier, i3 can notify you when a window ask 
attention, so no problem for xchat I guess. For usb notifications, I do 
not know, never really minded, I mount storage myself, and for other 
hardware, udev does what it have to do alone.


Now I am also a programming student, so learning a good language for 
a twm

shouldn't be an overkill.

I face a question now:
1) Should I take time to learn a new twm, or should I install both
twm and xfce.

2) i3 vs awesome! Just installed i3, lets see how it fares against 
awesome.


--
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.



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Fwd: Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-07 Thread Scott Ferguson

resent to list

 Original Message 
Subject: Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning
advice.
Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2014 22:25:18 +1100
From: Scott Ferguson 
To: Anubhav Yadav 

On 07/02/14 16:01, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
>> Defining "desktop" is the tricky bit (to some it only means where the
>> box sits). In this instance I've assumed the OP means office apps, bit
>> of gaming, internet apps - so I'd go go for a two slice setup, with a
>> separate / and /home, with and a swap file. For a similar "desktop" in a
>> business environment it'd be SOE rules so I would use more partitions
>> (backup and rollout planning would be a nightmare otherwise - not to
>> mention support contract negotiation headaches).
>>
> 
> Hi, I would like to set up an environment for development and programming.
> So I guess I will have to separate out the /usr and / part and keep
> /home on a different
> partition too.
> 

Not mandatory, given the size of cheap external drives, but handy *if*
you set the appropriate sizes (you may only know the right size from
personal experience). I'd strongly recommend a separate /home.
In general I use multiple slices, if only because it's easier to hunt a
fish in ponds than in oceans (poor analogy for indexes).

Kind regards

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-06 Thread Anubhav Yadav

> Simply that, if you intend to take i3, you will have to learn to think
> differently. My opinion is that tiling wm are far more efficient than
> classic stacking window managers, but it indeed changed my habits. Since
> then, for example, I do not use any file explorer, they are slower than
> command line for most things. Of course, you still can use file explorers...
>
So you use only command line for navigation files? Or do you use a command line
file explorer?

> Now, i3 is the one I choose because it did not implied a lot of learning,
> it's configuration file is really clean: no need to learn any programming
> language there, but facts is that it lacks some features against more
> hard-core twm, for example some others have layouts: new windows does not
> just split current container, they are moved in a precise place of the
> screen.
> But anyway, here is a quote from i3-wm.org: "i3 is primarily targeted at
> advanced users and developers.". Gnome users might do not feel good there.
> It provide only a window manager, no menu, no desktop, etc. You will have to
> install those yourself.

All I need is a good network manager. A good notifier so that I get notified of
xchat mentions or usb plugged in notifications.

Now I am also a programming student, so learning a good language for a twm
shouldn't be an overkill.

I face a question now:
1) Should I take time to learn a new twm, or should I install both twm and xfce.

2) i3 vs awesome! Just installed i3, lets see how it fares against awesome.

-- 
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-06 Thread Anubhav Yadav

> Defining "desktop" is the tricky bit (to some it only means where the
> box sits). In this instance I've assumed the OP means office apps, bit
> of gaming, internet apps - so I'd go go for a two slice setup, with a
> separate / and /home, with and a swap file. For a similar "desktop" in a
> business environment it'd be SOE rules so I would use more partitions
> (backup and rollout planning would be a nightmare otherwise - not to
> mention support contract negotiation headaches).
>

Hi, I would like to set up an environment for development and programming.
So I guess I will have to seperate out the /usr and / part and keep
/home on a different
partition too.

-- 
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-06 Thread Scott Ferguson

On 06/02/14 21:32, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:
> 
> 
> Le 06.02.2014 11:03, Scott Ferguson a écrit :
>> On 06/02/14 20:09, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Le 05.02.2014 19:31, John Hasler a écrit :
 yaro wrote:
> Separate /usr is unneeded and actually complicates boot for little
> benefit.

 It allows you to mount it read-only (or not at all when there's a
 problem).  It only complicates boot due to the practice of putting
 stuff
 that belongs under / under /usr.
>>>
>>> Do you have some example? I would like to learn that kind of issues
>>> *before* they happen to me :)
>>>
>>>
>>
>> An fsck error.
>> In which case it's quicker to run e2fsck on just /usr than on the
>> entire /
> 
> I meant an example of stuff which should be in / but are in fact in /usr.

Sorry. I'm curious about that too.


> 
>> NOTE: I don't see why a "desktop" user would need a separate /usr for
>> any other reason - but I'll keep following the post thread just in case.
>>
>> Kind regards
> 
> Filling /usr enough to make it explode? If it is in /, then it is said (
> here and there ) that it may cause problems.  However I do not have
> enough knowledge myself to know if it is true.
> 
> 
Sure, I can understand that scenario - on a developer machine, or for
other uses where /usr may grow enough to crowd on other directories -
but just not on the (ineffable) "desktop" box.  My bad for feeding the
digression.

Defining "desktop" is the tricky bit (to some it only means where the
box sits). In this instance I've assumed the OP means office apps, bit
of gaming, internet apps - so I'd go go for a two slice setup, with a
separate / and /home, with and a swap file. For a similar "desktop" in a
business environment it'd be SOE rules so I would use more partitions
(backup and rollout planning would be a nightmare otherwise - not to
mention support contract negotiation headaches).

Kind regards


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-06 Thread berenger . morel




Le 06.02.2014 11:03, Scott Ferguson a écrit :

On 06/02/14 20:09, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:



Le 05.02.2014 19:31, John Hasler a écrit :

yaro wrote:

Separate /usr is unneeded and actually complicates boot for little
benefit.


It allows you to mount it read-only (or not at all when there's a
problem).  It only complicates boot due to the practice of putting 
stuff

that belongs under / under /usr.


Do you have some example? I would like to learn that kind of issues
*before* they happen to me :)




An fsck error.
In which case it's quicker to run e2fsck on just /usr than on the 
entire /


I meant an example of stuff which should be in / but are in fact in 
/usr.



NOTE: I don't see why a "desktop" user would need a separate /usr for
any other reason - but I'll keep following the post thread just in 
case.


Kind regards


Filling /usr enough to make it explode? If it is in /, then it is said 
( here and there ) that it may cause problems.  However I do not have 
enough knowledge myself to know if it is true.



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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-06 Thread Scott Ferguson

On 06/02/14 20:09, berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:
> 
> 
> Le 05.02.2014 19:31, John Hasler a écrit :
>> yaro wrote:
>>> Separate /usr is unneeded and actually complicates boot for little
>>> benefit.
>>
>> It allows you to mount it read-only (or not at all when there's a
>> problem).  It only complicates boot due to the practice of putting stuff
>> that belongs under / under /usr.
> 
> Do you have some example? I would like to learn that kind of issues
> *before* they happen to me :)
> 
> 

An fsck error.
In which case it's quicker to run e2fsck on just /usr than on the entire /

NOTE: I don't see why a "desktop" user would need a separate /usr for
any other reason - but I'll keep following the post thread just in case.

Kind regards



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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-06 Thread berenger . morel




Le 05.02.2014 15:08, Anubhav Yadav a écrit :
I do not know for awesome, but for i3, the reason could be to avoid 
learning
a new way of thinking. I3 is not only efficient in a memory and CPU 
point of
view, but also in term of user's time, if you learn how to use it. 
Tiling Wm

are different from the standard ones.



I don't really get what are you trying to say? Should I go for using
tiling wms or not?
Or learning the tiling wm are too time consuming?
Regards
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


Simply that, if you intend to take i3, you will have to learn to think 
differently. My opinion is that tiling wm are far more efficient than 
classic stacking window managers, but it indeed changed my habits. Since 
then, for example, I do not use any file explorer, they are slower than 
command line for most things. Of course, you still can use file 
explorers...


Now, i3 is the one I choose because it did not implied a lot of 
learning, it's configuration file is really clean: no need to learn any 
programming language there, but facts is that it lacks some features 
against more hard-core twm, for example some others have layouts: new 
windows does not just split current container, they are moved in a 
precise place of the screen.
But anyway, here is a quote from i3-wm.org: "i3 is primarily targeted 
at advanced users and developers.". Gnome users might do not feel good 
there. It provide only a window manager, no menu, no desktop, etc. You 
will have to install those yourself.



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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-06 Thread berenger . morel




Le 05.02.2014 19:31, John Hasler a écrit :

yaro wrote:
Separate /usr is unneeded and actually complicates boot for little 
benefit.


It allows you to mount it read-only (or not at all when there's a
problem).  It only complicates boot due to the practice of putting 
stuff

that belongs under / under /usr.


Do you have some example? I would like to learn that kind of issues 
*before* they happen to me :)



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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread Paul Cartwright

On 02/05/2014 03:00 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> I liked Gnome 2 on Debian 5 and 6.  When I upgraded to Debian 7, I
> disliked Gnome 3.  So, I settled for Xfce.  Since then, I've
> discovered MATE --  a fork of Gnome 2 with packages available for
> Debian (and others):
>
> http://mate-desktop.org/
>
>
> I recently wiped and rebuilt a desktop machine using Wheezy,
> de-selected "Graphical desktop environment" during installation, and
> then installed MATE and lightdm afterwards.  Very nice.  :-)
>
+1
I wish I would have done what you did. I basically just installed
wheezy, then added Mate & lightdm. I love it!

-- 
Paul Cartwright
Registered Linux User #367800 and new counter #561587


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.


On 02/04/2014 11:16 PM, Anubhav Yadav wrote:

... when my computer boots up, it takes like 25 seconds more
to get started after entering the username and password. That is 25 seconds
of more wait after logging in.


That's a symptom of misconfigured and/or conflicting software packages.


Another possibility is insufficient memory.


Another is a dying hard drive.  Have you downloaded/ burned/ run the 
manufacturer diagnostics for your hard drive yet?




If I messed up my system and want to restore back to a clean state, I can keep
my /home intact? And maybe preserve the data?


That's one reason for multiple partitions and/or drives.



Not everybody has access to portable HDDs for backup, do they?


If all you have is one laptop with one hard drive, major system 
administration tasks are going to be a challenge.  It's much easier if 
you have additional places to put backup data -- external hard drives, 
USB flash drives, cloud drives, whatever.  (You should also burn your 
data to optical and archive the disks off-site periodically.)  A second 
computer makes system administration easier.  So do hard drive bays and 
caddies.  So does a cache of old/ extra/ salvaged parts.  Etc..



David


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.


On 02/05/2014 12:43 AM, Anubhav Yadav wrote:

It's GDM. I haven't tried any other on this laptop, I can install
lightDM. But then after formatting
I am going to ditch gnome and switch to awesome.


I liked Gnome 2 on Debian 5 and 6.  When I upgraded to Debian 7, I 
disliked Gnome 3.  So, I settled for Xfce.  Since then, I've discovered 
MATE --  a fork of Gnome 2 with packages available for Debian (and others):


http://mate-desktop.org/


I recently wiped and rebuilt a desktop machine using Wheezy, de-selected 
"Graphical desktop environment" during installation, and then installed 
MATE and lightdm afterwards.  Very nice.  :-)



David


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread John Hasler


yaro wrote:
> Separate /usr is unneeded and actually complicates boot for little benefit. 

It allows you to mount it read-only (or not at all when there's a
problem).  It only complicates boot due to the practice of putting stuff
that belongs under / under /usr.

> Most Linux distributions rely on /usr being present before the end of
> the early userspace.

See above.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread David Guntner

y...@marupa.net grabbed a keyboard and wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 05, 2014 08:27:15 AM David Guntner wrote:
>> Can't speak for him, but for me it's a segmenting issue.  If I have to
>> wipe / for example, I'm not wiping things in /usr or /usr/local (where
>> my locally-installed programs go) unless I have to, or even /home.  Of
>> course, there's no reason to want to protect /home from an install that
>> wants to format the / partition, right? :-)
>>
> 
> Separate /usr is unneeded and actually complicates boot for little benefit. 
> Most Linux distributions rely on /usr being present before the end of
> the early userspace.

I've been doing it that way for 20+ years on any *NIX system (including
different distributions of Linux) I've been involved with, and have
never once had any kind of complication or problem with it.  It's there,
it gets mounted, it gets used.

The only problem I've had was with trying to do a separate /etc
partition once.  Oops.  *That* one made for interesting times.  I think
I had to reformat and repartition after that one. :-)  Since it was a
fresh install, it just wasted a bit of time.

> Preserving /usr between installations is a bad idea because 
> you'll have all your software MINUS any information on any of it being 
> installed available to your package manager. This means one reinstall later 
> you're basically stopped from even upgrading most of it, can't remove it with 
> the manager, etc.

And when I'm doing something that requires it, I tell the installer to
format the /usr partition as well.  Not that hard to do. :-)

> Separate /home is a must for me, though. That's the number one thing to 
> persist between not only installations, but machines. Best thing to put on a 
> dedicated hard disk if you can.

Yup.  But even if on the same physical disk, it makes way too much sense
to have a separate /home to not do it.

   --Dave

smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature

Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread Ralf Mardorf

I prefer to have everything in /, even /home, but OTOH data for audio
productions always gets to another HDD than to the HDD where the Linux
is installed. The advantage of having everything in / is that HDD space
automatically is allocated as needed, OTOH regarding to performance I
use a second HDD for audio and MIDI data.

Resume: It depends to the usage what you separate and what not. IMO for
most users it's the best to have a partition for / and another one
for /home. It's different for me, because /home is not that important
for me, data anyway gets it's own HDD.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread yaro

On Wednesday, February 05, 2014 08:27:15 AM David Guntner wrote:
> Zenaan Harkness grabbed a keyboard and wrote:
> > On 2/5/14, Anubhav Yadav  wrote:
> >>[...]
> >>
> > Nowadays, the only partitions I use are:
> > /boot - about 1GiB
> 
> Unless you're planning on having a lot of different kernels installed,
> you really don't need a full gig for /boot (it doesn't hurt anything,
> though).
> 

Heck, unless you plan to multiboot with other Linux/Unix-likes there's little 
point in a separate /boot EXCEPT possibly as a way to keep your machine 
booting if you remove Linux (Probably better to just reinstall the Windows 
boot manager.).

> > / - root partition, the rest
> 
> How Windowsian of you. :-)
> 
> > This way, it's really simple, and the old reasons (for most home users
> > at least) for having multiple partitions are no longer valid (separate
> > backups, making sure /root does not fill up, etc), since the HDDs are
> > so capacious.
> 
> It's not just a matter of capacity.  I've got a 1TB drive, and I still
> 
> partition them into separate sections:
> > $ df -k
> > Filesystem 1K-blocks Used
> > Available Use% Mounted on rootfs 
> >  1818872   299704   1426704  18% / udev  
> > 102400 10240   0% /dev tmpfs 
> >30954012812296728 
> >  5% /run /dev/disk/by-uuid/36f6b922-0e9a-4ce5-aeee-c92104fa2428   1818872
> >   299704   1426704  18% / tmpfs  
> > 51204  5116   1% /run/lock tmpfs 
> >   10495600   1049560   0%
> > /run/shm /dev/sda1 137221
> >20211109689  16% /boot /dev/sda12 
> > 67284600 16339432  47527264  26% /home /dev/sdb1 
> > 307665016 40081124 251955400  14% /backup
> > /dev/sda9   28835836   351612
> >  27019444   2% /opt /dev/sda6
> >288259269908   2666252   3% /tmp /dev/sda7
> >   28835836  7400256  19970800  28% /usr /dev/sda8
> >   48060296 15360908  30258020 
> > 34% /usr/local /dev/sda10 
> > 28835836  1455184  25915872   6% /var /dev/sda11 
> > 28835836   179364  27191692   1% /var/spool> 
> >> 1) What partitioning scheme should I choose now, If I want to have
> >> /home, /var, /usr, /tmp on different partitions and I just want a windoze
> >> partition of 50-60 gb.
> > 
> > But WHY do you want them on separate partitions? XY problem?
> 
> Can't speak for him, but for me it's a segmenting issue.  If I have to
> wipe / for example, I'm not wiping things in /usr or /usr/local (where
> my locally-installed programs go) unless I have to, or even /home.  Of
> course, there's no reason to want to protect /home from an install that
> wants to format the / partition, right? :-)
> 

Separate /usr is unneeded and actually complicates boot for little benefit. 
Most Linux distributions rely on /usr being present before the end of the 
early userspace. Preserving /usr between installations is a bad idea because 
you'll have all your software MINUS any information on any of it being 
installed available to your package manager. This means one reinstall later 
you're basically stopped from even upgrading most of it, can't remove it with 
the manager, etc.

Separate /home is a must for me, though. That's the number one thing to 
persist between not only installations, but machines. Best thing to put on a 
dedicated hard disk if you can.

> >> 2) As you can see in the screenshot, gparted shows that the hdd is
> >> only 698 gb whereas when purchased it was 720 GB. Any ways to recover
> >> the lost sectors back?
> > 
> > You "lost" none - 700,000,000,000 bytes is the correct and advertised
> > size of the drive, as sold.
> > 
> > 2^10^3 bytes is one GiB
> > 10^9 bytes is a "GB" or the term used for advertising (historical, too
> > much momentum to change it nowadays it seems).
> 
> Don't forget, the capacity they list is the full, complete capacity of
> the drive - not the usable amount of space.  You always lose some to
> formatting information, etc.
> 
>   --Dave

Conrad


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread David Guntner

Zenaan Harkness grabbed a keyboard and wrote:
> On 2/5/14, Anubhav Yadav  wrote:
>>[...]
> Nowadays, the only partitions I use are:
> /boot - about 1GiB

Unless you're planning on having a lot of different kernels installed,
you really don't need a full gig for /boot (it doesn't hurt anything,
though).

> / - root partition, the rest

How Windowsian of you. :-)

> This way, it's really simple, and the old reasons (for most home users
> at least) for having multiple partitions are no longer valid (separate
> backups, making sure /root does not fill up, etc), since the HDDs are
> so capacious.

It's not just a matter of capacity.  I've got a 1TB drive, and I still
partition them into separate sections:

> $ df -k
> Filesystem 1K-blocks Used 
> Available Use% Mounted on
> rootfs   1818872   299704   
> 1426704  18% /
> udev   102400 
> 10240   0% /dev
> tmpfs 30954012812
> 296728   5% /run
> /dev/disk/by-uuid/36f6b922-0e9a-4ce5-aeee-c92104fa2428   1818872   299704   
> 1426704  18% /
> tmpfs   51204 
>  5116   1% /run/lock
> tmpfs10495600   
> 1049560   0% /run/shm
> /dev/sda1 13722120211
> 109689  16% /boot
> /dev/sda12  67284600 16339432  
> 47527264  26% /home
> /dev/sdb1  307665016 40081124 
> 251955400  14% /backup
> /dev/sda9   28835836   351612  
> 27019444   2% /opt
> /dev/sda6288259269908   
> 2666252   3% /tmp
> /dev/sda7   28835836  7400256  
> 19970800  28% /usr
> /dev/sda8   48060296 15360908  
> 30258020  34% /usr/local
> /dev/sda10  28835836  1455184  
> 25915872   6% /var
> /dev/sda11  28835836   179364  
> 27191692   1% /var/spool


>> 1) What partitioning scheme should I choose now, If I want to have
>> /home, /var, /usr, /tmp on different partitions and I just want a windoze
>> partition of 50-60 gb.
> 
> But WHY do you want them on separate partitions? XY problem?

Can't speak for him, but for me it's a segmenting issue.  If I have to
wipe / for example, I'm not wiping things in /usr or /usr/local (where
my locally-installed programs go) unless I have to, or even /home.  Of
course, there's no reason to want to protect /home from an install that
wants to format the / partition, right? :-)

>> 2) As you can see in the screenshot, gparted shows that the hdd is
>> only 698 gb whereas when purchased it was 720 GB. Any ways to recover
>> the lost sectors back?
> 
> You "lost" none - 700,000,000,000 bytes is the correct and advertised
> size of the drive, as sold.
> 
> 2^10^3 bytes is one GiB
> 10^9 bytes is a "GB" or the term used for advertising (historical, too
> much momentum to change it nowadays it seems).

Don't forget, the capacity they list is the full, complete capacity of
the drive - not the usable amount of space.  You always lose some to
formatting information, etc.

  --Dave




smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature

Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

> I do not know for awesome, but for i3, the reason could be to avoid learning
> a new way of thinking. I3 is not only efficient in a memory and CPU point of
> view, but also in term of user's time, if you learn how to use it. Tiling Wm
> are different from the standard ones.
>

I don't really get what are you trying to say? Should I go for using
tiling wms or not?
Or learning the tiling wm are too time consuming?
Regards
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread Brian

On Wed 05 Feb 2014 at 18:29:01 +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:

> > Network Manager isn't good, it's bad, however if you like it, you can
> > use it with Xfce too and don't worry about installing GNOME
> > dependencies, since Xfce is based on much GNOME stuff. Regarding to
> > Thunar vs Nautlius, note that if you install all that automatic crap,
> > than Thunar anyway will use GNOME Virtual File System. Xfce is based on
> > GTK too. IOW you could use Natilus with Xfce and don't need to worry
> > about too much extra dependencies, but you still could benefit from the
> > advantages that Xfce has got over GNOME.
> 
> Thats why I have been thinking that why not use a minimal window
> manager like awesome or i3?

Network Manager isn't that bad that thousands of people don't use it
successfully. Having spurned Xfce because it lacks a tabbed file
browswer and a good network manager-type manager your thoughts appear
fanciful.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread berenger . morel




Le 05.02.2014 13:59, Anubhav Yadav a écrit :
Network Manager isn't good, it's bad, however if you like it, you 
can

use it with Xfce too and don't worry about installing GNOME
dependencies, since Xfce is based on much GNOME stuff. Regarding to
Thunar vs Nautlius, note that if you install all that automatic 
crap,
than Thunar anyway will use GNOME Virtual File System. Xfce is based 
on

GTK too. IOW you could use Natilus with Xfce and don't need to worry
about too much extra dependencies, but you still could benefit from 
the

advantages that Xfce has got over GNOME.


Thats why I have been thinking that why not use a minimal window
manager like awesome or i3?
--
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


I do not know for awesome, but for i3, the reason could be to avoid 
learning a new way of thinking. I3 is not only efficient in a memory and 
CPU point of view, but also in term of user's time, if you learn how to 
use it. Tiling Wm are different from the standard ones.



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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

> Network Manager isn't good, it's bad, however if you like it, you can
> use it with Xfce too and don't worry about installing GNOME
> dependencies, since Xfce is based on much GNOME stuff. Regarding to
> Thunar vs Nautlius, note that if you install all that automatic crap,
> than Thunar anyway will use GNOME Virtual File System. Xfce is based on
> GTK too. IOW you could use Natilus with Xfce and don't need to worry
> about too much extra dependencies, but you still could benefit from the
> advantages that Xfce has got over GNOME.

Thats why I have been thinking that why not use a minimal window
manager like awesome or i3?
-- 
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread Ralf Mardorf

On Wed, 2014-02-05 at 17:49 +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> I have tried xfce and I believe that its a great great desktop environment,
> However I am restricted in using that for a couple of reasons.
> 1) It does not seem to have a good network manager.
> the network manager in gnome lets us define some profiles for different
> networks and you can switch them easily.
> 
> For eg I have a static IP address at home and DHCP at my college.
> In gnome I can make two profiles for both and switch them on the fly.
> XFCE has that?
> 
> Thunar is a great browser but it lacks in tabbed browsing.
> I cannot open tabs in thunar.
> Also it does not have a network bookmark on the left pane
> to browse the network.
> Nautlus is great but then why do I install gnome dependency on xfce?

Network Manager isn't good, it's bad, however if you like it, you can
use it with Xfce too and don't worry about installing GNOME
dependencies, since Xfce is based on much GNOME stuff. Regarding to
Thunar vs Nautlius, note that if you install all that automatic crap,
than Thunar anyway will use GNOME Virtual File System. Xfce is based on
GTK too. IOW you could use Natilus with Xfce and don't need to worry
about too much extra dependencies, but you still could benefit from the
advantages that Xfce has got over GNOME.

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

> The slowness you've been
> noticing, as people have pointed out, may be due do GNOME and
> whichever start-up proggies it has. I'd recommend LXDE, XFCE or
> fluxbox instead of awesome though.
>

I have tried xfce and I believe that its a great great desktop environment,
However I am restricted in using that for a couple of reasons.
1) It does not seem to have a good network manager.
the network manager in gnome lets us define some profiles for different
networks and you can switch them easily.

For eg I have a static IP address at home and DHCP at my college.
In gnome I can make two profiles for both and switch them on the fly.
XFCE has that?

Thunar is a great browser but it lacks in tabbed browsing.
I cannot open tabs in thunar.
Also it does not have a network bookmark on the left pane
to browse the network.
Nautlus is great but then why do I install gnome dependency on xfce?


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread Ralf Mardorf

I stay with MBR and recommend before switching to LVM, to test the usage
in a virtual machine. As long as the maximum size of your HDDs is
<= 2 TB MBR doesn't cause issues and it definitively is easier to use
MBR than LVM, including resizing partitions. The advantage that you can
enlarge a "partition" virtually might be good for data servers, but
likely will cause confusion on a home PC.

For most home PC usages LVM will add more disadvantages than advantages.

Simply test it by e.g. installing a Linux to e.g. Virtual Box, that's
how I formed an opinion about LVM vs MBR.

I will stay with MBR as long as possible. For my needs LVM is a PITA.


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread Nuno Magalhães

Hi,

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 6:33 AM, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> 2) As you can see in the screenshot, gparted shows that the hdd is
> only 698 gb whereas when purchased it was 720 GB. Any ways to recover
> the lost sectors back?

As people pointed out, GB and GiB are different[1]. However, 720GB is
670.6 GiB, and 698GiB (i don't know gparted) is 749.5 GB; and no one
mentioned the fact that FATs take up space too.

About your disk, 5400 RPMs vs 7200 does make a difference, but you'll
notice it both in Windows and Debian. The slowness you've been
noticing, as people have pointed out, may be due do GNOME and
whichever start-up proggies it has. I'd recommend LXDE, XFCE or
fluxbox instead of awesome though.

As for partitioning - backup your data first. If instead you want to
keep some partitions untouched, the Debian installer allows you to
(but don't go automatic). If you're gonna wipe the disk clean, i'd
recommend using LVM and setting small partitions. You can always grow
them later (shrinking them depends on the underlying filesystem - you
can't shrink XFS).

Don't bother virtualizing windows if you want it for games (but that's
just me), for that you should just keep dual-booting. Careful if
you're reinstalling everything - Windows will clear your MBR, so
install it first (you may partition an NTFS for it and leave the rest
unpartitioned), and only after install Debian.

My 2¢.
HTH,
Nuno

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread Lisi Reisz

On Wednesday 05 February 2014 08:43:15 Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> > Also, does it just wait as though it is checking your
> > credentials, or do you actually login, but get a spinning cursor
> > or something else?
>
> Yes, spinning cursor! Exactly!

As you suggest yourself, ditch GNOME 3.

Lisi


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread Lisi Reisz

On Wednesday 05 February 2014 06:33:35 Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> 2) As you can see in the screenshot, gparted shows that the hdd is
> only 698 gb whereas when purchased it was 720 GB. Any ways to
> recover the lost sectors back?

No, it does not say that you have 698 Gigabytes (decimal), it says 
that you have 698 gibibytes (binary).  I would imagine that suppliers 
use the decimal because it sounds more; hence 720 Gigabytes.

Lisi

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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread berenger . morel




Le 05.02.2014 07:46, Zenaan Harkness a écrit :

On 2/5/14, Anubhav Yadav  wrote:

Hello list,

I have an Asus laptop, with 720 gigs hardisk and i5 processor.
Right now I have a dual boot of Windoze (only for playing fifa
and assassins creed) and debian wheezy 64 bit.



Here is the screenshot of my current partitions.
http://i.imgur.com/YI4a1oU.png


I used to use multiple partitions as you do.

Nowadays, the only partitions I use are:
/boot - about 1GiB
/ - root partition, the rest

This way, it's really simple, and the old reasons (for most home 
users
at least) for having multiple partitions are no longer valid 
(separate

backups, making sure /root does not fill up, etc), since the HDDs are
so capacious.


I use various HDDs, and usually they have less than 500GiB, so, I still 
do some partitioning job when I install my computers.


First, I try to have a 5GiB boot partition. Why so big? Because DVD are 
4.7GiB large, so this size allows me if I have a problem to boot on 
installation iso DVD. I could use other isos, indeed, but sometimes I 
lack Internet connection.
Then, my / partition is around 1GiB. Probably too large, since it 
contains only few files, almost only text files ( /etc ).
I mount /var and /usr on other partitions, first because it is advised 
to do so on lot of Internet docs, but in the time, facts and experience 
proved that those docs were true, because one time I did not did it, and 
filled my root partition ( /var growth fast when you are using more than 
one repo, and /usr also when you tinker and try to discover tools ). It 
was not hard to understand and fix the problem, but I do now really want 
to tinker again with this if I can avoid it. At the moment, I use 
something like 5GiB for /usr and same for /var.
However, someone with larger HDDs could simply use, say, 50GiB for /, 
/usr and /var. It should be enough to contain all Debian DVDs for one 
arch, which means that even if you install everything for your arch, you 
wont fill entirely your /.
Then, I usually have 2 partitions of same size: one for /home, another 
to backup /home, in case I do something wrong. I must admit that I 
rarely do backup so it's almost only wasted space.
For /tmp, I use a 1GiB partition, formatted with ext2, to not have any 
journaling feature, and so, increase speed, even if it is not a lot.


Another reason that I can see about partitioning with some care, if you 
know what you want and the size of tools you need, is configuration of 
partitions. For example, / will only have very small files in it, so you 
can use "news" option of ext, and /var may contain big files, so using 
"largfile" ( or something alike ) may, or may not, be interesting. It 
will loose lot of space for small files, but will avoid fragmentation of 
bigger ones ( yes, fragmentation exists on extX, even if the problem is 
far less problematic than with FAT or NTFS. Reducing fragmentation may, 
or may not, speed up when the system do some cleaning there ). There is 
also the possibility to forbid executing files on some partitions, or 
use options like noatime.


But, those things are for tinkerers and/or people which needs high 
performances, for example on servers. A normal user probably do not mind 
about that.



1) What partitioning scheme should I choose now, If I want to have
/home, /var, /usr, /tmp on different partitions and I just want a 
windoze

partition of 50-60 gb.


But WHY do you want them on separate partitions? XY problem?


I second this. Partitioning is something which cost a lot of time. 
Doing it without knowing why is not a good thing.



Now, if your boot is slow, I do not think that the problem comes from a 
bad partition scheme. I would bet more on the same reasons which makes 
windows computer slow: tons of useless stuff starts.

Try to run:
$/usr/sbin/service --status-all

You will probably find stuff you do not need and which are running. 
Also, it depends heavily on your desktop environment. Using bloatwares 
makes the computer slow. KDE and gnome may be called bloatwares, and are 
if you do not use most of their features.
Using the right tools for your needs is the best way to make a computer 
fast, even despite old hardware. The problem is that it implies to learn 
what you really need, and which software gives you only the feature you 
really use.



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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 2:01 PM, Chris Bannister
 wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 05, 2014 at 12:46:07PM +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
>>
>> Because when my computer boots up, it takes like 25 seconds more
>> to get started after entering the username and password. That is 25 seconds
>> of more wait after logging in.
>
> Is that logging in at the tty prompt or through a GDM, if a GDM which
> one?
>
> Have you tried another GDM?

It's GDM. I haven't tried any other on this laptop, I can install
lightDM. But then after formatting
I am going to ditch gnome and switch to awesome.

>
> Also, does it just wait as though it is checking your credentials, or do
> you actually login, but get a spinning cursor or something else?
>

Yes, spinning cursor! Exactly!


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.

2014-02-05 Thread Chris Bannister

On Wed, Feb 05, 2014 at 12:46:07PM +0530, Anubhav Yadav wrote:
> 
> Because when my computer boots up, it takes like 25 seconds more
> to get started after entering the username and password. That is 25 seconds
> of more wait after logging in.

Is that logging in at the tty prompt or through a GDM, if a GDM which
one?

Have you tried another GDM?

Also, does it just wait as though it is checking your credentials, or do
you actually login, but get a spinning cursor or something else?

-- 
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.


On 02/04/2014 11:00 PM, Anubhav Yadav wrote:

The HDD I have in my laptop has somewhat low rpms, maybe that's
the issue?
Its a sata HDD with 5400 rpms!


5400 vs. 7200 RPM is measurable, but HDD vs. SSD is amazing -- ~10 ms 
seek time vs. ~100 us latency (2 orders of magnitude!).  This is most 
noticeable at boot, when your OS is trying to load hundreds (thousands?) 
of files.  If you can afford ~$100, it's worth it.



David


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Re: About to format the whole laptop, need some partitioning advice.