Disk Partitioning Questions

[FastTurtle]

I'm now reading the AMD Install manual and have Questions - System Specs are 4x 4TB Sata, 2x 2TB Sata SSD, 4x 450GB SaS, 3x 900GB SaS - 72GB SaS for Boot - 128GB of Memory with R7 5800x3d

1) why are we still recomending 2x Ram for Swap? That means in a High Ram System like mine that you want 256GB (1/4 TB) for swap! 4GB should be plenty on a Desktop, Servers are different.

2) Why recomend XFS instead of Ext4 for the File Systems? Is it the replacement? Didn't exist when I last used Gentoo.
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AsRock B550 Phantom Gaming 4
128GB 3200 Mhz memory
4x 4TB Sata - 2x 2TB Sata SSD - 4x 450GB SaS - 3x 900GB SaS - 72GB SaS for Boot
LSI 9211-8i in HBA mode for all of the SaS drives
Radeon 6800 (Non XT) for GPU

[FastTurtle]

I can't even read the forums lately. Just noticed a Sticky Thread for Partitioning but it doesn't change my Questions
_________________
AsRock B550 Phantom Gaming 4
128GB 3200 Mhz memory
4x 4TB Sata - 2x 2TB Sata SSD - 4x 450GB SaS - 3x 900GB SaS - 72GB SaS for Boot
LSI 9211-8i in HBA mode for all of the SaS drives
Radeon 6800 (Non XT) for GPU

[eccerr0r]

Depends on your workload how much swap you need. 2X physical memory is excessive these days especially with compressed swap, but it really depends on what you use the machine for. If you have a lot of stuff in RAM that just sits there (whether idle or memory leak), swap is very helpful. (This is excepting hibernation.) If you never hit swap, good for you, but still should have a little bit just in case. Most of my computers swap=physical memory, but my server is 2x just because it only has 8GB RAM and rather it swap than choke on memory leaks.

Don't know about why specific filesystems, I use ext4 pretty much exclusively.
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Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

[logrusx]

[pietinger]

FastTurtle,

here you can find some recommendations for swap:
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/storage_administration_guide/ch-swapspace

Yes, a long time EXT4 was recommended by our developers. In 2023 they changed it to XFS.

(I am still using EXT4 ... because I watch the number of kernel-patches for them in every new minor version ... there are more patches for XFS ...)
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https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Pietinger

[logrusx]

[bandreabis]

As I recon, xfs had always existed since years, even before ext4. I'm now keeping using ext4 for root on SSD, and (when it wasn't explicitly recommended for root) xfs for documents (I don't like having lost+found within my documents).
Also heard well about btrfs, but using only when testing other distros.

When last installed, Gentoo recommended ext4. But I've been ever attracted by xfs.
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Il numero di post non fa di me un esperto! Anzi!

[FastTurtle]

Sorry it's been a few days as I'm still working on the partition layout and system adjustments since I'll need to pull the win10 NVME from the system. Not a big deal as it's positioned for ease of access but I'll keep it handy if something goes boom - I have a habit of doing that with Gentoo and it's fun because I learn a lot from that.

What I've decided on is to configure 4x swap partitions across the 450GB drives (2GB size) meaning 8GB total. Shouldn't need more then that.

As to the other drives, I'm currently looking at a several RaidZ Arrays - 4x 4TB disks, 2x 2TB SSD disks, 3x 900GB disks and the last one is 4x 450GB disks where I'm putting the swap files. ZFS shouldn't have any issues with this as it's a seperate partition for the swap space but tell me if I'm wrong.

So what I'm planning for the System Disk:

Thankfully, GParted allows me to do what I plan on for the System Drive
/boot = 2GB and yes it's larger then normal - allows multiple kernel options
/ = Remainder of disk space
/root = 4GB
/home = 4gb

The way I see using GParted is create the /boot at the beginning of the disk, /home at the end with /root inside that. The use the remainder of the drive for / and all of the other mount points. Should work well
_________________
AsRock B550 Phantom Gaming 4
128GB 3200 Mhz memory
4x 4TB Sata - 2x 2TB Sata SSD - 4x 450GB SaS - 3x 900GB SaS - 72GB SaS for Boot
LSI 9211-8i in HBA mode for all of the SaS drives
Radeon 6800 (Non XT) for GPU

[NeddySeagoon]

FastTurtle,

I assume that /boot will be your ESP formatted VFAT?

A separate /root is bit odd but should be harmless.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[FastTurtle]

Instead of mixing with my last post on planning, I'm going to chime in on the points raised by everyone else.

Logrusx: Thanks for the reality check. Means I can and should stick with ext4 for /root but can go with the Recomended XFS for the remainder of the space. Wasn't aware that XFS was under Heavy Devevelopment, thus gets broken quite frequently. I've got an HEDT/Workstation but most of my use is Desktop so I want Stability in all things. Might stick with ext4 for / and be done with it. Solid and Reliable.

As to the Swap Issue, I think it's an old recomendation from back when 4GB was expensive and we only had 32bit systems. Now days, even a Win7-x64 system only wants 12-16GB of swap due to hibernation. As I've had 64+GB of ram for the last 7 years, I've not used a Swap/Page File on Windows at all. No complaints though with only 32GB it did and that goes back to an E3-1230 Haswell Xeon from the early oughts.

pietinger:
As I stated, I have decided to go with a total of 8GB of Swap spread across 4x drives in 2GB chunks. Should solve the issue but with all the feedback, I'm thinking of simply using ext4 on the system drive and being done with it. The only thing I will ensure is that /root is a seperate mount point simply for security reasons. As to /home, I have to decide which RaidZ array will get that mount point though I'm leaning towards my 4x 4TB drives. Should provide plenty of space for my needs with the other RaidZ arrays devoted to stuff like, media files.

In thinking about this, I could doulbe the planned swap space and have it as the only use for those drives. They're not large enough but at 15k RPM, they are the fastest available and with two of them being refurbed, if I loose one, it wont hurt anything at all unless the kernel is using that drive then.
_________________
AsRock B550 Phantom Gaming 4
128GB 3200 Mhz memory
4x 4TB Sata - 2x 2TB Sata SSD - 4x 450GB SaS - 3x 900GB SaS - 72GB SaS for Boot
LSI 9211-8i in HBA mode for all of the SaS drives
Radeon 6800 (Non XT) for GPU

[FastTurtle]

NeddySeagoon:

I'm one of the old users coming back to the fold. Started with Gentoo in 2003 and used it for a decade before my last employer forced me back to Windows - Too much work from home and they're systems didn't like anything but Windows connecting for Remote.

Yes: I'm going with the standard ESP on the 2GB /boot. Although larger then normal, I do like having multiple kernels and if I decide on testing another Distro, I have enough room for the kernel though one thing I've never liked was using a image file and booting. Seems to be messy to me when a straight boot works as well if not better and doesn't intro security issues.

As to keeping root seperate, this goes back that far. EX: /var/log fills up and system complains but keeps working but if /root filled up, system slows down drastically or even quits and you have to do an emergency reboot insto single user mode to find/repair the issue if possible.

One thing that has me rethinking this is the LiveDVD image on USB. If I customize it the right way, I should be able to make a solid rescue image with the tools needed to fix many of the common problems - Think that's already been done but I'm using a 16GB flash drive for that, thus pleny of room

Anyone have suggestions of apps to add to the LiveDVD image for System Rescue/Repair?
_________________
AsRock B550 Phantom Gaming 4
128GB 3200 Mhz memory
4x 4TB Sata - 2x 2TB Sata SSD - 4x 450GB SaS - 3x 900GB SaS - 72GB SaS for Boot
LSI 9211-8i in HBA mode for all of the SaS drives
Radeon 6800 (Non XT) for GPU

[NeddySeagoon]

FastTurtle,

If you think you may not need swap, you can add a swap file as needed.

swap can be on raid too, that avoids the issue of what happens if you lose a drive.
Swap is on a degraded raid set but it works.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[logrusx]

[FastTurtle]

Interesting about swap on a Raid array but as I'm going to be using ZFS - they specifically stated not to place Swap on a ZFS partition for some reason that I've not looked into as yet. Instead of spreading the swap space across four drives, I could simply use one disk and have an eight to sixteen gigabyte swap partition. Should help if the system needs the swap, especially if the /tmp files decide to puke for some reason.

On the Hibernate option - Don't use it even under Windows since it takes too long to start up. I'll stick with Sleep (suspend to ram) or shutdown as in that mode, my UPS provides over 24 hours of run-time. Long enough to decide if I need to shut down or at least get my Generator connected to recharge the UPS. Shouldn't be an issue now as I have a 12kw PV array that's Grid Tied but also has the ability to power the house during the day if the Grid ever goes down.
_________________
AsRock B550 Phantom Gaming 4
128GB 3200 Mhz memory
4x 4TB Sata - 2x 2TB Sata SSD - 4x 450GB SaS - 3x 900GB SaS - 72GB SaS for Boot
LSI 9211-8i in HBA mode for all of the SaS drives
Radeon 6800 (Non XT) for GPU