Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem Choices
On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 02:52 -0400, Colin wrote: How much space should I dedicate to my system partition (/dev/hda3), where I'm installing Gentoo and all my programs? Depends on usage. There's no hard and fast rule :) On mine, system partition is 10gb, /usr/portage/ is on its own partition ~5GB and then I have /home (XFS) as a 20GB partition. Actually, you might be better off putting/trying out LVM since I have a heck of a time moving/growing partitions after the fact. qtparted doesn't do XFS. Even partition magic don't do it. So, pretty much screwed except for the copy/backup to diff drive -- Ow Mun Heng Gentoo/Linux on DELL D600 1.4Ghz 98% Microsoft(tm) Free!! Neuromancer 15:05:33 up 19:00, 6 users, load average: 0.01, 0.10, 0.14 -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem Choices
Colin wrote: Just some questions about partitioning and filesystems... my boot partition (/dev/hda1) will be ext3, and I've got a gig of swap (/dev/hda2). Then what? Then make more partitions depending upon your need's. If this were to act as a server i would suggest making a seperate partition for /var since the log files can sometimes take up a lot of space and if they do bloat up and take all the space you have got your system wont crash since it's on a seperate partition (chances are less atleast)... and so on you could justify a seperate /usr partition to mount it as read-only once everything is installed for more security but you dont wanna go that way... I would suggest you make a /boot (ext3), / (reiserfs), /home (again reiserfs) since i personally dont feel you should mix so many different file systems and reiserfs is a good / fast file system (did i say stable). For / if you give 10Gig's it should be more than enough for almost anything. And /home can never be enough depending upon your needs... Give as much space as you can to home since that's where all your mp3 and vidoe file's are going to stay. Anand Singh Bisen How much space should I dedicate to my system partition (/dev/hda3), where I'm installing Gentoo and all my programs? This computer will use GNOME and mainly be used for multimedia purposes: MP3 playback, DivX movie playback, et cetera, but I'll more than likely move into more advanced topics like DVD playback, Internet browsing and GPS if I ever come across some money to burn. I'm planning to format this ReiserFS and give it ten gigabytes of room to work with. I'd like speed, but data integrity is also important. (But I'll have a backup! I'll likely tarball this partition and save it on my home computer when installation is complete, for a nice, virgin install of Gentoo so I can roll back if I need to.) Next, what would be a good choice for a partition full of my personal files? It'll mainly be MP3's (~5 MB each), DivX-compressed videos (~232 MB each), and any other personal files I choose to take with me on the road to replace my aged D-Link MP3 player. My primary objective is fast reads. I'll probably mount this partition read-only and have a backup on my main computer at home, so data integrity isn't much of a concern. -- Colin -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem Choices
Colin wrote: Just some questions about partitioning and filesystems... my boot partition (/dev/hda1) will be ext3, and I've got a gig of swap (/dev/hda2). Then what? You are on the right track. 10G should be good enough for most system partitions, just keep on eye on /usr/portage/distfiles to make sure it doesn't consume all of the space on your root volume. And reiserfs is the best choice for '/'. I would also suggest making a /var partition or LVM volume of 2-5GB. /var serves as the gentoo build space, as well as temporary file space. Thus the /var directory will experience a lot of file creations, modifications, and deletions, so it is best to keep it isolated from the rest of the system to cut down on fragmentation. This filesystem should also be reiserfs, for performance reasons. You might also create a /tmp partition of 1-2G. As for the media space (I'll call it /media), I don't think it particularly matters what filesystem you choose here. It doesn't sound like you will have more than a few thousand files there, and they will not be updated very often, so xfs, reiserfs, and ext2/3 are all suitable choices. Access time and throughput are not usually a problem for these types of files due to system and application buffering, so I would suggest /media be placed last on the disk so it occupies the inside (and slowest) cylinders. FYI, I have most of my media files on an external 4200rpm USB2 drive. The rest of the disk should probably be /home, and again, I doubt you will be able to notice a difference in the various filesystems for this space. You could combine /media and /home, but then you can't really mount it read-only. [Slightly Off Topic] With the current journaled filesystems for linux, it really doesn't make sense to talk about 'data-integrity'. Corrupted files are just as possible on reiserfs, xfs, jfs, and ext3 as they were on ext2. This is because, AFAIK, all of the current filesystems journal the filesystem meta-data only, so if the system crashes, the filesystem can repair itself. The filesystem makes no guarantees about repairing the files it contains. Reiser4 is one of the first to attempt file data journaling as well, but AFAICT, it is still fairly unstable. -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem Choices
On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 18:15:53 +0200, Richard Fish wrote: You are on the right track. 10G should be good enough for most system partitions, just keep on eye on /usr/portage/distfiles to make sure it doesn't consume all of the space on your root volume. Or use a different directory, the location can be changed in /etc/make.conf. I would also suggest making a /var partition or LVM volume of 2-5GB. /var serves as the gentoo build space, as well as temporary file space. Thus the /var directory will experience a lot of file creations, modifications, and deletions, so it is best to keep it isolated from the rest of the system to cut down on fragmentation. Once again, you can point PORTAGE_TMPDIR to wherever you want. I have a large partition I use for things like building ISO images, intermediate video file and suchlike and have PORTAGE_TMPDIR set to a directory on this partition. [Slightly Off Topic] With the current journaled filesystems for linux, it really doesn't make sense to talk about 'data-integrity'. Corrupted files are just as possible on reiserfs, xfs, jfs, and ext3 as they were on ext2. This is because, AFAIK, all of the current filesystems journal the filesystem meta-data only, so if the system crashes, the filesystem can repair itself. The filesystem makes no guarantees about repairing the files it contains. Reiser4 is one of the first to attempt file data journaling as well, but AFAICT, it is still fairly unstable. ext3 also has an option to journal the data, but there's a significant performance hit. -- Neil Bothwick Bother, said Pooh as he farted in front of a badly placed candle pgpyZUUsx5kz3.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem Choices
Neil Bothwick wrote: Once again, you can point PORTAGE_TMPDIR to wherever you want. I have a large partition I use for things like building ISO images, intermediate video file and suchlike and have PORTAGE_TMPDIR set to a directory on this partition. Yes, configuring portage for your needs is good advice. My point is mostly that you want to keep 'temporary' files and 'permanent' files separated. Same goal, different method. I still think you want /var to be a separate partition, but it could be smaller in that case, maybe 1-2G. Just keep in mind that /usr/tmp is a link to /var/tmp, and many applications that use /usr/tmp expect a virtually unlimited amount of disk space to be available. [Slightly Off Topic] With the current journaled filesystems for linux, it really doesn't make sense to talk about 'data-integrity'. Corrupted files are just as ext3 also has an option to journal the data, but there's a significant performance hit. Thanks...good to know. I have never used ext3, so my knowledge about it is quite limited. -Richard -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem Choices
Hi, On Tuesday 05 April 2005 08:46, Colin wrote: Just some questions about partitioning and filesystems... my boot partition (/dev/hda1) will be ext3, and I've got a gig of swap (/dev/hda2). Then what? ext3 for /boot is just overkill. Since /boot is alsmost never mounted, the journal is just a waste of space. You only write to /boot when you install your new kernel and a crash in that few seconds is very unlikly (and will be a disaster with every fs), so go the easy way, ext2 for /boot is fine. Apropos space 15mb are well enough for /boot so a small ext2 will be fine. For the rest, if you are the only one who uses your box, one big partition for / and one for /home will be fine. If not, a part for /var and /tmp should be considered. How big each depends on the size of your harddisk and personal taste. reisefs is well suited for that task, xfs has a habit of replacing files with zeros, when the box crashes (this is a security feature, but quite hazardous for your data). -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
