Sebastian Spiess wrote:
> ...
> I want to do some changes to partition sizes and a clean install with hardy
> on my notebook which runs feisty by now.
> Before I start my upgrade to hardy I have some questions and I am hoping for
> answers :-)
I hope i have some that are helpful. :-)
>- In total I want to increase my swap to 1024mb so that I can use
> hibernating on my laptop. I have 1GB ram so when I am
> correct I need 1GB of swap space to hibernate, correct?
Yes - probably slightly more than that if i remember correctly. I think
there has to be room for a little bit of state information, but i can't
remember where i heard that.
> What is your experience with hibernating? (not stand-by) I have a Toshiba
> satellite P100 if that matters.
I tried hibernate once on my Dell Latitude D830 w/- 4 GB RAM, and it was
so slow, i swore never to do it again. Your situation may be different,
but i found it too slow to be feasible - it was quicker to reboot than
to hibernate. I use suspend all the time and it works OK. A couple of
times i've had problems, and if that's the case i just force a reboot.
>- By now my root dir is 5.2 GB big and now after a year filled to 3.6GB. I
> thought of reducing it by at least 500MB.
> These 500MB I would then add to my swap (by now 512MB)
>- By now my /home partition is 6GB and full, so there is no way to fit
> that on a single layer DVD for backup reasons So
> I will increase its size as well.
>- What are your recommendations about moving other parts to separate
> partitions? /tmp, /var or to much hassle?
I can't think why anyone would want separate partitions for anything
except /home, especially on a laptop where space is more likely to be at
a premium. My laptop has 2 partitions: /boot, and encrypted LVM. In
the encrypted LVM are only root and swap, nothing else.
>- Although I want to do a clean install to get rid of the debris of my
> initial "getting familiar with ubuntu" period I
> would like to keep as many settings as possible. But how can I select needed
> from not needed?
In terms of software, i suspect deborphan and debfoster are probably the
tools you're looking for. Also, keep a copy of the output of 'dpkg
--get-selections'.
> What about starting with a clean /home and then copy everything from the
> backup as needed? This would probably cause some
> trouble with evolution/amarok/f-spot...
For the applications that you use regularly, you'd be better to keep
what you've got i think. If anything, all of /home would be what i
would keep.
> Especially with Firefox I've read that 'starting over' can increase stability
> quite a bit. So what about exporting
> bookmarks and blocklist and settings and then install all add-ons new instead
> of copying the whole profile over?
I've never found that to make much difference.
>- By now I downloaded the alternate install CD and I was thinking about
> making use of the encryption feature? are USB
> fingerprint reader (thinkfinger) supported? Any experience? What about using
> a USB dongle with gpg key?
I use encrypted LVM with a nice long passphrase. After years of reading
Bruce Schneier, i don't have much confidence in fingerprint readers and
the like, and even encrypted hard disks have been cracked through a
memory scanning technique now:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/cold_boot_attac.html
Paul
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
--
ubuntu-au mailing list
ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
