Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
On Sun, 30 Jun 2002 14:31:55 +0900, Pascal Goguey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You will notice the benefit to separate /home /opt and /etc directories when you upgrade to Mandrake 9.0. Yes, the advantage of having /home, /opt, and /etc _DIRECTORIES_, as you write yourself, no doubt about that. But is there any benefit of having these on different _PARTITIONS_? You can't separate /etc because it contains important information that is needed at boot (i.e. /etc/fstab). It needs to be part of the / partition. Separating things into different partitions can give you greater fault-tolerance. If you put everything into one big partition and it gets corrupted, you'll probably lose everything (assuming a fsck doesn't fix it). If your /tmp filesystem gets trashed somehow (e.g. it overflows or is corrupted), and it is separated from the rest of the system, you can easily recover. You may also gain a little extra speed, but not enough to be noticeable. Performing an 'upgrade' to a distro is still not as reliable as users would like, and many people are more comfortable with a fresh install right down to reformatting the partitions. But if you want to install, you don't have to reformat the partition. The installer will install every file (thus replacing all the files having the same name), and it will work exactly as it would on a clean partition, the only difference being that the files that are not use anymore would still remain. as far as the installer installs all the necessary files, I cann't see any reason that could make it less reliable than a clean (i.e. with formatting) install. As for upgrade, you may be right. It depends how the upgrade is done, which files are kept and which ones are overwritten... This is a real problem with RPM-based distros. The Debian distros can upgrade all they want with no problem. In fact, you only need to install Debian once. After that you can upgrade as often as you wish. If you have just one big '/' partition that would mean you would lose all your user data in /home, Only if you reformat. I use Mandrake's default formatting, so in case of installing a new version, I format the partition in order to clean everything, but it's not mandatory. I put everything in one big partition (my HDD is too small to do otherwise). When it comes to upgrading, I boot with a rescue disc and mount my GNU/Linux partition. I delete all directories except /home, reboot, and do a full installation of Mandrake without formatting anything. The installer sees that /home already exists, and it doesn't mess it up. BeOS used a single partition and it was perfectly possible to install without formatting, and without loosing your previous settings. I always wanted to try out BeOS, but by the time I was ready to install it the company was ready to fold :( I guess I'll wait and see how the BeOS clones like OpenBeOS develop before trying those. -- Sridhar Dhanapalan I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it. -- Jean-Louis Gassée, founder of BeOS Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
This is a real problem with RPM-based distros. The Debian distros can upgrade all they want with no problem. In fact, you only need to install Debian once. After that you can upgrade as often as you wish. I would like to know how to do this. I've been playing with other distros to see which one I like best. The apt-get feature is nice enough that I'm going to switch to Debian just for that. Also, since Familiar and Intimate are based on Debian, I can be consistant when switching from my desktop to my ipaq. Anyway, when messing with apt-get, I had to re-install a few times because apt-get fried the system. Maybe because I put the testing feeds into the sources list... I couldn't boot back up after upgrading and I don't know enough about Linux to know what was wrong or how to fix it. When I get done re-installing my system, I'm sticking with the stable feed. Barry Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
Hello (again!) I always wanted to try out BeOS, but by the time I was ready to install it the company was ready to fold :( I guess I'll wait and see how the BeOS clones like OpenBeOS develop before trying those. Yes, the OpenBeOS is progressing nicely. I hope it will reach the BeOS R5 sometime this year. Compared to other systems, it becomes slowly outdated (no support for recent hard, for instance ATA100, ATA 133, etc... But compared to the latest Windows I have used, it still holds a respectable place, althogh it wasn't upgraded for years. Well, that's it. It's not the proper place to talk about BeOS anyway. But watch OpenBeOS, it may become interesting soon. Pascal. Sridhar Dhanapalan I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it. -- Jean-Louis Gassée, founder of BeOS Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
On Sunday 30 Jun 2002 8:35 am, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: On Sun, 30 Jun 2002 14:31:55 +0900, Pascal Goguey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You will notice the benefit to separate /home /opt and /etc directories when you upgrade to Mandrake 9.0. Yes, the advantage of having /home, /opt, and /etc _DIRECTORIES_, as you write yourself, no doubt about that. But is there any benefit of having these on different _PARTITIONS_? You can't separate /etc because it contains important information that is needed at boot (i.e. /etc/fstab). It needs to be part of the / partition. SNIP True I should not have used /etc as an example. I only mentioned it because it contains important configuration settings that get lost if you do an Install and so require you to try to remember how you set it all up last time. Backing up /etc and then selectively restoring the required config files is a better idea. derek Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
to switch to Debian just for that. Also, since Familiar and Intimate are based on Debian, I can be consistant when switching from my desktop to my ipaq. Anyway, when messing with apt-get, I had to re-install a few times apt-get does 'exist' more or less for Mandrake as well, but it's certainly not a widel-used method. Nevertheless, I've played a bit with it. I can get some packages upgraded or installed successfully with it, but most of the time it fails because of connection problems and not having a decent sources.list. One of the list members sent me his, but mirror lists seem to change frequently. Either that, or they were all busy every time I tried upgrading. That's happpened as well with urpmi. Barry Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
Barry Michels wrote: The way I look at it, if I run out of space somewhere and have more space on another partition, I'm screwed, right? So, isn't it better to have one big / partiton? What's the benefit to having separate /, /home, /var, etc? Barry Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Well, scenario... You have kde the way you want it. You have a lot of data in /home. Now along comes 9.0 If you have a separate /home, you install 9.0 without formatting /home If you have everything in / then you use Upgrade and cross your fingers, or you use upgrade packages only and ponder how to change links and add new things from 9.0 Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
Barry Michels wrote: The way I look at it, if I run out of space somewhere and have more space on another partition, I'm screwed, right? So, isn't it better to have one big / partiton? What's the benefit to having separate /, /home, /var, etc? the main reason I use a / partition and a separate /home is for the occasional update and or reinstall. that way I only change the operating part of the system, without losing all my personal files, like music, or documents , etc. a reasonable / partition ( in my case a 4-5 gig partition ) has always been ample. on my laptop I only have a 2 gig root partition and a 3 gig /home. still plenty. It's really handy to have different partitions for different purposes too. I also have a /backup partition of 10 gig on my main box I use for storage. I would hate to lose anything on that partition if I had to reinstall because i broke something playing around with stuff. and there are no doubt other good reasons to use multiple partitions. My two cents. ;-) Mike McNeese Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
On Saturday 29 Jun 2002 9:21 pm, Barry Michels wrote: The way I look at it, if I run out of space somewhere and have more space on another partition, I'm screwed, right? So, isn't it better to have one big / partiton? You are correct. That is why my laptop which only has a 2G HD uses one big '/' partition. You can resize and move partitions, but that is obviously a pain. What's the benefit to having separate /, /home, /var, etc? You will notice the benefit to separate /home /opt and /etc directories when you upgrade to Mandrake 9.0. Performing an 'upgrade' to a distro is still not as reliable as users would like, and many people are more comfortable with a fresh install right down to reformatting the partitions. If you have just one big '/' partition that would mean you would lose all your user data in /home, all your configuration settings in /etc and all your 'extra' applications you mat have put in /opt. So by having separate partitions you can reformat '/' and '/usr' without destroying all the other data. Also if you were running a heavy duty server you would want to have different partitions to optimise HD performance, but that is not usually a consideration in a desktop system. derek Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
So, are there any recommendations on size for these different partitions? I've got a 60gb drive that I want to dedicate to Linux. The 100GB and 120GB are going to be for miscellaneous storage. Barry - Original Message - From: Derek Jennings [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 29, 2002 4:43 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions? On Saturday 29 Jun 2002 9:21 pm, Barry Michels wrote: The way I look at it, if I run out of space somewhere and have more space on another partition, I'm screwed, right? So, isn't it better to have one big / partiton? You are correct. That is why my laptop which only has a 2G HD uses one big '/' partition. You can resize and move partitions, but that is obviously a pain. What's the benefit to having separate /, /home, /var, etc? You will notice the benefit to separate /home /opt and /etc directories when you upgrade to Mandrake 9.0. Performing an 'upgrade' to a distro is still not as reliable as users would like, and many people are more comfortable with a fresh install right down to reformatting the partitions. If you have just one big '/' partition that would mean you would lose all your user data in /home, all your configuration settings in /etc and all your 'extra' applications you mat have put in /opt. So by having separate partitions you can reformat '/' and '/usr' without destroying all the other data. Also if you were running a heavy duty server you would want to have different partitions to optimise HD performance, but that is not usually a consideration in a desktop system. derek Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
On Saturday 29 Jun 2002 9:56 pm, Barry Michels wrote: So, are there any recommendations on size for these different partitions? I've got a 60gb drive that I want to dedicate to Linux. The 100GB and 120GB are going to be for miscellaneous storage. Recommendations? Hmm.. Well first of all remember that almost everyone changes their partitions when they upgrade because they got it wrong first time :-) Also *everyone* has their own opinion. There is no 'right way'. Here is what I have at present (and why) / 2.3GB 28% full /usr 6.5GB 30% full (almost every app goes in here so it needs to be big) /usr/src 2.6GB 24% full (most people do not have a /usr/src partition. I keep one because I like to keep copies of all RPMs not on the install CDs that I have installed here. That way I can reinstall those apps very quickly after an upgrade) /home 8GB 21% full derek Barry - Original Message - From: Derek Jennings [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 29, 2002 4:43 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions? On Saturday 29 Jun 2002 9:21 pm, Barry Michels wrote: The way I look at it, if I run out of space somewhere and have more space on another partition, I'm screwed, right? So, isn't it better to have one big / partiton? You are correct. That is why my laptop which only has a 2G HD uses one big '/' partition. You can resize and move partitions, but that is obviously a pain. What's the benefit to having separate /, /home, /var, etc? You will notice the benefit to separate /home /opt and /etc directories when you upgrade to Mandrake 9.0. Performing an 'upgrade' to a distro is still not as reliable as users would like, and many people are more comfortable with a fresh install right down to reformatting the partitions. If you have just one big '/' partition that would mean you would lose all your user data in /home, all your configuration settings in /etc and all your 'extra' applications you mat have put in /opt. So by having separate partitions you can reformat '/' and '/usr' without destroying all the other data. Also if you were running a heavy duty server you would want to have different partitions to optimise HD performance, but that is not usually a consideration in a desktop system. derek Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
You will notice the benefit to separate /home /opt and /etc directories when you upgrade to Mandrake 9.0. Performing an 'upgrade' to a distro is still not Agreed, especially in the case of /home. When I last did a fairly major upgrade, /home was on a 150 meg partition sitting on a old drive that I just pulled from the system when I upgraded to a new hard driev. Having home separate was easy - I just tared up the old partition and transplanted it into a bigger space. I don't see how /etc can be on a separate partition, but still, tarring up /etc is pretty easy to do - I've done it a few times during upgrades or reinstalls. My biggest changeover was from a 1.6 gig drive with Redhat 6.2 to Mandrake 7.2 on a 30 gig drive. I had plenty of space, so I made / rather large, but still had separate partitions for /usr/local, /home, /var, and oene or more others. I've had enough space *someplace* (I can usually throw stuff in /tmp, and / is large) to make moving partitions around, which I've had to do a few times. Underestimating one's needs usually causes one to have to resize :( -- in that respect, having a large / is good. Typically, a large / also gives you enough room in /usr, where all the 'goodies' are, and there seems to be fewer instances of a partitino split between / and /usr. But that's probably subjective. One point about /opt -- I figured originally I was going to need more room for 'extras' and found that it was mostly wasted: I didn't need 5 gigs of space for KDE and star office and maybe some other stuff - so I just folded /opt back into /, and used the space elsewhere. derek Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
The way I look at it, if I run out of space somewhere and have more space on another partition, I'm screwed, right? So, isn't it better to have one big It's certainly inconvenient when that happens, but as long as you have enough space spmeplace else - enough to hold the image of whatever you need to transplant, that way you don't have to stuff it somewhere external like tape or CD-RW. It's not a good idea to have everything in one massive partition because often if one segment fills up (/var for instance) it can hose your system. Even putting /var on a separate partition can hose things if /var fills up, though. It's easier to recover from if it's separated out, I think. Over here, I have two drives, and I've hosted /var and /var/spool on the same drive -- then I found that my /var was filing up, and I had to do some moving things around, end opted to have /var all by itself on the old drive, and /var/spool on its own partition (I pull news down, and that generates copious amounts of data in /var). Having a separated out /home is a very good idea so you don't have to lose your data between upgrades. Other partitions can be kept as part of / : it really depends on what you are going to use them for. Back in the older days wehn most had smaller drives, it was easy for the novice to underestimate how much space would be required, and that is still a strong argument for not having multiple partitions - at least until you can guage your disk usage for a while. But nowadays with larger drives - typically 30 gigs on up - making a 30 gig / partition is hardly the right approach. For what it's worth over here, my main Linux is on about 11 gigs of what was left over after I figured what I'd want for everything else, like 5 gigs for /home, 5 gigs for /usr/local, 5 gigs for spool, etc. The way I'm going, I'm probably going to run close to running out of room on /home, and realistically (tm of Radio Shack) ;) that was a poor choice on my part - 11 gigs is way more than enough for the OS / applications portion. (That's one reason I just folded /opt in rather than having it as a separate partition). Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
Hello, On 2002.06.30, at 06:16, Derek Jennings wrote: On Saturday 29 Jun 2002 9:56 pm, Barry Michels wrote: So, are there any recommendations on size for these different partitions? I've got a 60gb drive that I want to dedicate to Linux. The 100GB and 120GB are going to be for miscellaneous storage. Recommendations? Hmm.. Well first of all remember that almost everyone changes their partitions when they upgrade because they got it wrong first time :-) Also *everyone* has their own opinion. There is no 'right way'. Here is what I have at present (and why) / 2.3GB 28% full /usr 6.5GB 30% full (almost every app goes in here so it needs to be big) Yes, these are reasonable figures. And if you take into account that there are 7 CDs for one distro, and that you have 2 cds of source, 5 CDs if you install everything (very unlikely), will represent 5 x 650 = 3250 MBytes. Mandrake's auto-format creates a 3.4 GB root partition, at least if your HD allows it. So it sounds like in most of the cases, you will not install more than 3.4 GB in the root partition. So with a disk like 60 GB, I would simply let Mandrake installer take care of everything. Pascal. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Pro's con's for separate partitions?
Hello! What's the benefit to having separate /, /home, /var, etc? You will notice the benefit to separate /home /opt and /etc directories when you upgrade to Mandrake 9.0. Yes, the advantage of having /home, /opt, and /etc _DIRECTORIES_, as you write yourself, no doubt about that. But is there any benefit of having these on different _PARTITIONS_? Performing an 'upgrade' to a distro is still not as reliable as users would like, and many people are more comfortable with a fresh install right down to reformatting the partitions. But if you want to install, you don't have to reformat the partition. The installer will install every file (thus replacing all the files having the same name), and it will work exactly as it would on a clean partition, the only difference being that the files that are not use anymore would still remain. as far as the installer installs all the necessary files, I cann't see any reason that could make it less reliable than a clean (i.e. with formatting) install. As for upgrade, you may be right. It depends how the upgrade is done, which files are kept and which ones are overwritten... If you have just one big '/' partition that would mean you would lose all your user data in /home, Only if you reformat. I use Mandrake's default formatting, so in case of installing a new version, I format the partition in order to clean everything, but it's not mandatory. BeOS used a single partition and it was perfectly possible to install without formatting, and without loosing your previous settings. all your configuration settings in /etc and all your 'extra' applications you mat have put in /opt. So by having separate partitions you can reformat '/' and '/usr' without destroying all the other data. Also if you were running a heavy duty server you would want to have different partitions to optimise HD performance, but that is not usually a consideration in a desktop system. derek Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Pascal Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
