Advice for a specific setup...

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2014 1:49 am Post subject: Advice for a specific setup...

Alright, I have yet to enjoy Gentoo and it may be due to trying this in VBox, so I have decided to convert a recent laptop to Gentoo. The system has 4GB of RAM and a 320GB HDD. Bearing in mind that I want the following partitions separate, is there any other advice for this specific setup?

Build directory for emerge on its own partition
Portage tree on its own partition
Distfiles on its own partition
Temp (/tmp) on its own partition
Logs on their own partition
Home on its own partition
Var on its own partition

Based on the 320GB disk, what would you recommend? The laptop will run KDE4, but I will be installing the minimal KDE package and manually emerging the programs I want. I do not want the full-blown KDE experience. I may also install VBox for running the laptop licensed OS (Vista) virtually. If I do, I will create a partition (normally /vm) for that.

Goverp · Advocate Joined: 07 Mar 2007 Posts: 2023

For that many separate areas on a (in modern terms) relatively small disk, I'd use LVM, not partitions, and start by allocating say 50% of that available. Then you can add space as you progress. Personally, I have fewer areas (/home, /var, /var/tmp (and /tmp bind mounted to a directory within that) and one for everything else).
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2014 1:35 pm Post subject:

I have only ever used LVM on multiple-disk setups. I honestly never thought about trying it on a single disk. My goal, as always, is to avoid fragmentation on systems where files that don't change much reside. I keep logs separate for this reason. They're always being added to, but things in /usr/bin are only changed when you do updates. Below is what I am planning to do this morning. Feel free to tell me if it is wrong in some way.

<BIOS partition> 2MB
/boot 100MB ext2
/ 4GB ext4
/var 4GB ext4
/var/tmp 16GB (1k clusters) ext4
/var/log 1GB (1k clusters) ext4
/usr 8GB ext4
/usr/portage 4GB (1k clusters) ext4
/home ~288GB ext4
/tmp 1GB ext2
<swap> 4GB

The drive is NOT advanced format, so the 1K cluster partitions should be fine. What say the pros?

Also, I know I am asking a lot of partitioning questions, but the reason is simple. Once I install I can only do a change via reinstall.

RazielFMX · l33t Joined: 23 Apr 2005 Posts: 835 Location: NY, USA

With 320GB, 100MB for /boot seems underwhelming. Personally, I prefer jfs for /var and /tmp. Also, having such a small /tmp may not work so well either (but I am no expert; I tend to abuse /tmp).

Here is my personal setup for reference:

gdisk:

cwr · Veteran Joined: 17 Dec 2005 Posts: 1969

I use one partition for /usr/portage and /usr/portage/distfiles, and one partition for /var (which takes care
of the log problem, and all the various stuff in the spool directories). I don't use a separate /tmp unless
I need a lot of extra space to build large packages, and when I do (eg. openoffice) I emerge a bin package
anyway. I have separate /boot (128MB) and /home partitions, and a bunch of very large partitions hung
off /home containing music and ARM code and other oddments.

LVM seems the best bet if you want to do a lot of shuffling around; but I'm not sure what a lot of partitions
gets you.

Will

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2014 6:24 pm Post subject:

Why is 1GB small for temp? I normally use 256MB but wanted to go overboard here. I thought building was done in /var/tmp/something, not in /tmp. What is /tmp used for in Gentoo? I never used any of it in Debian, but that of course, is not Gentoo. I also only want 100MB for boot because I only expect to use one kernel.

N8Fear · Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2014 6:56 pm Post subject:

100MB for boot is more than enough unless you plan on putting a rescue iso there.
The recommended way of dealing with /tmp is afaik tmpfs (and therefore it's in ram - mine is using about 4 MB right now). Building is done in /var/tmp/portage by default.
You should plan to use an additional (small) partition if you want to use GPT (either for the bios boot partition (around 4 MB should be ok) or for the EFI partition (no experience myself, but heard about 100MB should be a good start).

Personally I use on "normal" boxes just 3 partitions: /, swap and /boot - lvm never really worked for me (but the last time I tried it was about 10 years ago: I'm sure it matured a bit in the meantime). There are also the new FS types that include lvm functionality (more or less): BTRFS (in mainline and considered stable by upstream) and ZoL/ZFS (great filesystem but needs to be patched into the kernel/build as external module). Both provide the flexibility of LVM without needing LVM.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2014 6:59 pm Post subject:

I use /tmp on a partition so I can lock it down with noexec,nosuid,nodev. The few Linux viruses I read about in years past all executed from /tmp (normally scripts) so I figure if I lock it down, I am golden even if somebody creates something new.

N8Fear · Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2014 7:02 pm Post subject:

szczerb · Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2014 11:34 pm Post subject:

I'm using /tmp bound to /var/tmp/root_tmp on all my systems. So build get done on a separate partittion but I don't need another one for /tmp.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 6:17 pm Post subject:

Thanks for all of your help on both of my threads! The system boots fine on real hardware and I am FINALLY inside a Gentoo system! I must have to do something else with VBox to get it to work, but I don't care about that right now. I have just booted in and have two odd issues. First, eth0 is not starting. Second, all filesystems were checked, claiming the time was off, and the time was back by one hour.

The big issue here is that ifconfig is showing me only lo. Not my wireless NIC (support is in the kernel) or my hardwired NIC. I compiled most everything I needed into my kernel. I know, bigger kernel, but it keeps things neat for me. Now however, I seem to be stumped. The system does not see eth0 (Realtek 8101/8102) or my wireless NIC. The Realtek is listed as "RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller". The wireless NIC is listed as "Intel PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh]". I did note that for some odd reason I have a single module loaded. The module is "e1000", which to my knowledge is a network driver, but I do not have an e1000 NIC.

The second issue appears to be the system not accounting for daylight savings since the time is off by exactly one hour. Or maybe it was due to the initial setup where the time was in UTC but set incorrectly. I have the following options set in /etc/conf.d/hwclock.

DONAHUE · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 8:08 pm Post subject:

boot the livemedia, mount the gentoo partitions, enter the chroot, run cd /usr/src/linux;make menuconfig , edit menuconfig to include:

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 10:31 pm Post subject:

Thanks, I am fairly sure those were already set in my kernel, but I will double-check. I have not emerged wireless-tools. I did emerge dhcpcd. I intend on using networkmanager in KDE, so should I keep dhcpcd and emerge networkmanager?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2014 10:59 pm Post subject:

The_Great_Sephiroth,

What does ifconfig -a tell about your interfaces?

udev will have renamed your interfaces away from the kernel names eth0 and wlan0 unless you told it not to.
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DONAHUE · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 12:15 am Post subject:

only one of net scripts, dhcpcd, networkmanager, wicd for network management. See the gentoo wiki for howto's. dhcpcd and wpa_supplicant will be used by network manager. as we (I) try to confuse you, keep asking.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 2:51 pm Post subject:

You're not confusing me. In fact I had everything you told me to check in my kernel checked. I built my support directly into the kernel however. I build modules for things that can be removed, like Bluetooth adapters. Things which are a part of my physical system, I build in. I did NOT have the 8169 driver checked however. I unchecked the others and checked it. My kernel is now compiling.

What you say makes sense to me about the networking managers. I will remove dhcpcd and install networkmanager since I am familiar with it in the Debian world and should be able to use it here. With that said, how do I purge the binaries and configuration files, scripts, etc for dhcpcd?

*UPDATE*

Alright, I remove dhcpcd, but I seem to have an issue. When I try "emerge networkmanager" I get loads of errors. It tells me then that I need to change some USE variables to include things like "networkmanager" and "kde", but those are in my USE variable. Am I missing something?

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 4:09 pm Post subject:

Wait, I believe I am starting to understand some of this and it seems very odd. Does networkmanager REQUIRE a desktop in Gentoo? I do not need a desktop to use it in Debian. I normally install all of my shell utilities and then install my desktop. How can I do this in Gentoo?

DONAHUE · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 6:43 pm Post subject:

Do you now have interfaces in ifconfig -a output?
nmcli is part of the networkmanager package and can be used from the CLI terminal..
What profile have you selected? If choice 6 or 7 appears with an asterisk:

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 10:08 pm Post subject:

Wow, that makes sense, but this is going to make installing a beast. In every distro I have ever used, I start by installing things like SSH, screen, ntp, sudo, lzma, bzip2, cups, alsa, etc. Then I install the core X server, then just the core KDE components, then I install just the stuff I want in KDE, and finally I do LibreOffice and extras like Flash. Are you saying that I cannot do this with Gentoo? I like minimalistic installs and it appears as though a few things (SSH for example) are installed by default already.

With that being said, I did use profile 6 (KDE without systemd) when installing. Should I set profile 1, do my shell utilities, change to 6, then do X and KDE? Will network manager even work at that point?

Jaglover · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 10:44 pm Post subject:

You set USE flags to get CUPS, ALSA, NetworkManager, you do not emerge them by hand. They may already be set by your profile, all you need is to sync and emerge -avNDu @world and all pieces will be pulled in.
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DONAHUE · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 10:56 pm Post subject:

if you get lucky the big emerge would happen without blockers and slot conflicts while you read a good book and that would be the easy way to move toward your ultimate goal.
You can revert to profile 1 and a blank USE= in /etc/portage/make.conf and then emerge --sync, emerge -uNDav world, emerge --depclean, etc-update, emerge gentoolkit, revdep-rebuild, emerge -pv networkmanager, take a look at what packages are slated to build and what USE flags are invoked particularly for network manager. This will be the hard way. Individual USE flags can be controlled in make.conf (globally), per package (package.use), or per emerge (USE="-X -kde" emerge foo). X kde says invoke the X kde flags. -X -kde says do not use X or kde support or dependencies in building foo.
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Jaglover · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 11:04 pm Post subject:

You may want to emerge app-portage/ufed at this point, it will show you what USE flags are already enabled, although emerge --info will show all current settings and software versions as well. Generally, you do not want to emerge anything without going over your /etc/portage/make.conf first.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 11:11 pm Post subject:

Maybe I need to learn more about USE flags first. I went ahead and wiped the laptop clean (zeroed it thanks to dd) so I can try again after I grasp more of this. My current understanding was that the USE flags allowed you to compile support for things your system would be using. Prepare to laugh, but I had a USE variable a mile long. I set things I did not want first, such as "-systemd". Then I set things my CPU supported, like "sse4_1". Then I set flags for things I KNOW I will be installing, like KDE, SSL, MySQL, various libraries, etc.

Is this not correct? Am I supposed to set it, install some things, set it again and install others, etc? If I did do it correctly, then I will simply set it like I had it before, install my basic needs, then emerge X and KDE first, followed by my apps. That will not bother me one single bit. It is simply reverse from what I have been doing, but it wouldn't be wrong, would it?

Now, what are these "package.use" files? I assume I would do an emerge with "--fetch-only" and then set the flags in these files?

Jaglover · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2014 11:22 pm Post subject:

You install the base system, reboot into your base Gentoo.
You run emerge-webrsync and emerge -avuND system to bring it up to date.
Make sure your desired profile is set, run emerge --info to see all settings in force.
If you are happy with what you see proceed with installing by running emerge -avuND world.
Keep in mind whatever you do can be undone, unless you do something really stupid with rm command. Trashing your install and starting from scratch was unnecessary.
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The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2014 12:14 am Post subject:

I know it was, but I enjoy redoing it, learning, and doing it again. It was how I originally learned Linux back in the 90's. I am honestly having a LOT of fun with Gentoo, and I haven't even made it into KDE yet. I haven't enjoyed Linux this way in a LONG time, and it was probably due to the boring installations of binary distros. Now I get to tweak packages for my individual systems, and that is fun, even if I hit a road-block and ask for help. I am planning on moving to Gentoo once I have the steps down pact in my head.

I guess one good thing DID come from systemd. I finally took the plunge and jumped into Gentoo!