Get help on partitioning here [Part 2]

[wrc1944]

The usual setup is that when you install any Linux distro it will by default overwrite the windows boot loader, and both will use either lilo or grub unless you specifically set it up differently. But I can't see how that would cause what you describe.

When you say "dual partition," what precisely do you mean? I assume what you mean is what is usually referred to as "dual-boot." Do you actually mean windows and linux are sharing some data on a single partition on a FAT32 or NTFS partition, or that you are dual booting, and both operating system using only their own partitions and file systems?

Maybe you resized your windows partition to make room for Yoper, and your windows virtual memory setting is now incorrect because windows has not got enough free disk space left on it's partition? In this case, windows might run out of swap space when doing intensive tasks, like music and games.

We need a little more info to diagnose this- maybe for starters post your Yoper /etc/fstab file so we can look at your partitioning scheme. Also, the output of dmesg might help some.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

[Crete]

Sorry, bad symantic error. Dual Boot. I had read early in this partition information that even though there separate OS partitions on the HD. The linux partition would remain viewable but not accessible on the windows side. No, no information is shared between win, and linux. The linux has boot, swap, /root, and /home, with 12 GB set aside for fat 32. Is there anything that sounds just retarded stupid here? Other than the grammar, and wording.
_________________
Crete,

In God We Trust,
All Others Bring Data

[wrc1944]

Crete,
If I understand you correctly, you have a windows installation (probably on hda1) and Yoper on all the other partitions, except the 12 GB FAT32, which is currently empty?.

It would better help us to understand what your current setup if while booted to Yoper, you would post your /etc/fstab file content, and in a terminal (as user) post the output of the following individual two commands:

df
dmesg

and as root, the output of lspci.

Knowing this basic info will better help posters in offering advice as to what might be going on. Just installing any distro and dual-booting shouldn't affect your windows installation in any manner. If you can boot to either windows or Linux OK and they run normally, your Linux bootloader is fine. The windows problem is likely only windows or hardware related- or you're trying to run things on win 98SE that really do better on XP.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

[Crete]

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs 15036336 2599212 12437124 18% /
/dev/root 15036336 2599212 12437124 18% /
/dev/hda4 11686868 676792 11010076 6% /home


what exactly are you looking for again when I run the dmesg command cause it basically shows what looks like the entire boot bios with irq's and the whole works.

This is the lspci when using su.

00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (different version?) (rev c1)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 1 (rev c1)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 4 (rev c1)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 3 (rev c1)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 2 (rev c1)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 5 (rev c1)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 ISA Bridge (rev a4)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce2 SMBus (MCP) (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a4)
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Ethernet Controller (rev a1)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 External PCI Bridge (rev a3)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce2 IDE (rev a2)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev c1)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]
_________________
Crete,

In God We Trust,
All Others Bring Data

[wrc1944]

From your df output it appears your fstab isn't mounting your windows partition(s). I thought dmesg might offer some clue as to if your boot process was affecting windows somehow.

But this really shouldn't make any difference. I really think your games and music problems in windows have nothing to do whatsoever with any Linux install you might have done.

If you want Gentoo, I would just go ahead and wipe yoper, and install Gentoo. Maybe while you're at it (if disk space allows), you could enlarge your windows partition some, if it's over 75% full right now. Also, if you haven't done so, do some win98 maintenance, like scandisk, defrag, remove unused apps, temporary internet files, visit windows98 update page (if it even exists), and anything else you can think of (it's been a while since I ran any win98 systems).

If you don't really wish to do the normal Gentoo install, and just want to get into Gentoo quickly to check it out, take a look at Kororaa.

http://www.kororaa.org/.

It's just a really good way of installing a binary Gentoo version in 2 hours. Then you can edit your /etc/make.conf file, emerge sync, run emerge -uD system, and emerge -uD world, and have a current full-fledged and normal gentoo system. I tried it once, and it was pretty good- but I usually like to do the normal Gentoo install.

Download the Kororaa installation manual (PDF file) on the Documention page for details and screenshots of the install.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

[Crete]

That's cool man! Derrived from the famous Bob P's Stage 1/3 Install huh? I'll get it going right away!
_________________
Crete,

In God We Trust,
All Others Bring Data

[KazuoSan]

Ok I'm the supern00b and i apologize if this has already been answered and I just missed it.

I'm going for dual boot with a 250gb SATAII drive and I have installed Windows XP on the first partition (50gb) and I have some shared storage for windows and linux to share (170gb FAT32) and I left the other 30gb unallocated for gentoo.

I tried the guessing game with partitions in suse and my guesses were rather off so I just want basic with only a few partitions (i'm not interested in a seperate partition for /home)

I would have thought windows, shared, /boot, swap, and / would have been good but I can only have 4 primary partitions. Can't the /boot be part of the main linux partition?

Also I have 3gb of RAM and I'm not possitive how large the swap should be...

Any suggestions will be appreciated

[wrc1944]

I have 1GB ram, and rarely use swap at all, but YMMV. Since you have 30GB for Gentoo, I'd go with 512mb, just to have a swap partition. You'll probably never touch it.

A basic Gentoo setup is /boot, swap, /, and /home. You really should have /boot and /home on separate partitions, so if you decide to change distros, or reinstall Linux, your /home is not affected.

/boot can certainly be part of /, but it's better as a separate 50-100mb ext2/3 partition, kept unmounted, as Gentoo default sets up.

With 30GB free space for Gentoo, there really is no reason to just to stay with the basic partition setup, and good reasons not to. Many users go with separate /var, /tmp, and /usr partitions, and a lot of them even break out /usr/portage to it's own partition for performance reasons.

Another reason for a more advanced partitioning scheme is that it allows different file systems to be used on different partitions, according to what they are used for. If you choose to use reiserfs, you need to plan for periodic dump/reformat/restore on a reiserfs partition, as they do fragment, with a bad performance hit. If you have /boot, /, /var, /tmp/ /usr, and /home all on one reiserfs partition, it becomes a bigger chore doing that.

It's easier to plan ahead and set your partitions up right at first, than find out later your setup doesn't meet your usage needs, as they evolve.

The 4 primary partitions concern is really no problem- just make windows, /boot, and /, primary, and everything else logical. Actually, Linux doesn't care which type they are, but windows needs to be on hda1, and be primary.

There's lots of info on this stuff on the forum- a search will turn up many helpful threads.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

[XenoTerraCide]

actually windows doesn't need to be on hda1 I have it on hda4. but you may run into problems if windows isn't C:\. and if your hardware is old enough /boot may need to be hda1.
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[Sergejs.Magers]

I have a 80 GB disk and I'm thinking about separating my /home to a new partition.

[wrc1944]

With only 256mb ram, 200mb swap is not enough for Gentoo, and IMO, any other operating system. I'd go with 1GB swap if you plan on compiling much of anything. One failed emerge on a major package and your /var/tmp/portage directory is full, and you will go heavily into swap, if not before- not a good situation, and a big performance hit. You really need more ram. These days, 512 is the bare minimum for a modern decent system with an up-to-date operating system, preferably more. Ram is cheap, and you need enough so you hardly ever even need to swap out anything.

Since you have the room, it's better to break down / into a more sophisticated partitioning scheme, as described in this thread. You won't be sorry in the long run.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

[XenoTerraCide]

yeah but I think 1 gig is overkill for a linux box. I never use that much ram even when compiling. unless it's going to be a server for other box's like maybe a thin client server. I have 512 and never fill it. I have an active system monitor that watch's both ram and swap. and ram get's about half full at most.
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[wrc1944]

XenoTerraCide,
Yeah, I totally agree with your post. Not knowing his hardware, I was just considering the fact that if he only has 256mb ram, and apparently wasn't going to increase it, and wanted to run Gentoo, with disk space available he should increase it way more than 200mb.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

[nss]

Following the instructions found at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/quick-samba-howto.xml, I would like to set up a Gentoo Samba3/CUPS/ClamAV Server for a small office. The hard drive is 160G and I plan on dividing it up into
1.) /
2.) swap
3.) /tmp
4.) /var
5.) /usr
6.) /home
I have not decided on the sizes of these partitions yet, nor have I committed to this particular layout. What would be good sizes for these partitions.
_________________
gentoo good to be true

[Sergejs.Magers]

[XenoTerraCide]

funny I turned my swap off (512 MB RAM) and have run an emerge -e world (currently on package 220 of 481) I also have /tmp mounted on tmpfs, and no ram problems. In fact I'm only using 128 MB of ram (currently). hmm... Honestly in your case you could probably get away with 200MB. as long as your not running a server for other machines. The extra swap is usually for a backup. I've seen it written swap should be double your ram. that's insane if you have 1 GB or more and are running it as a desktop system.
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[VinzC]

[wrc1944]

Well, maybe Gentoo uses less ram than I thought, so 1GB swap might be overkill on most desktop systems. However, I do know on one 512mb physical ram box I have often used up all the ram when compiling large packages after I've been up and running other stuff for a period of time. It then goes into swap usage. At that point, the system really slows down and the response is really bad. I would think if he had several programs running, didn't boot his machine very often, and tried compiling something in the background, 256mb would not be enough, and he might even run out of swap if it's only 200mb.

On my 1GB physical ram box, I can't recall ever going into swap. If you open the KInfoCenter-memory monitor (assuming you have kde installed), you can see than the disk cache fluctuates quite a bit when compiling, and will gradually fill up over a day or two of uptime and lots of activity. I have run systems with 256mb ram, but they quickly can become pretty sluggish.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

[XenoTerraCide]

maybe I should have clarified my system. I use fluxbox, with conky for a system monitor. so a destop like gnome or KDE is going to use a lot more ram than me.
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[Avenger902]

I am thinking about redoing my Linuxbox since I am upgrading my ram on it (128 > 384MB) Anyway I use 2 hard drives. The First one is a 20GB that gives me about 45MB/s in hdparm (which will be where my /boot and / partitions will reside). The Other is a 60GB that gives me about 30 MB/s in hdparm (/home). My question is for SwapSpace. Is it better to put it on the same drive as my system will be, or on the slower drive where my /home partition will be so it won't thrash around so much...

Thanks in Advance!

[Mallow005]

Always try to put your swap on a seperate harddrive than your system, it will increase performance since you will most likely be loading programs etc on your system hd, which might need to use swap which will use your other hd at the same time. Your home hd will most likely contain data which is not as important for loadtimes and performance.


UNRELATED:

I have a question on partitioning a webserver, mailserver, and possibly a fileserver. I've never done a mailserver before so I was wondering if there was any advantage to creating a seperate partition for mail, webfiles, etc.
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Laptop: Inspiron 8200, 1.6Ghz P4, 256M RAM.

[jmbsvicetto]

Hi Mallow005.

The need to or the gain from using separate partitions is directly related to the load of the server and the solution you choose.
How many users will connect to the server? What mail and web solution are you going to use? Will you be using sendmail or postfix for the MTA? Do you want the users to have system accounts or not? Will you drop the mail through procmail or do you want users to connect to the server? Will you use POP3 or IMAP4? Will you use only a webmail solution? What solution?
Are you going to use apache or any other web server? Will you be supporting static *html pages or do you want to have support for PHP and or PERL? Should the system support connections to a DB? Will it run locally or remotely? Will you use MySQL, PostgreSQL or other DB?
The partitioning sheme should be decided after considering the former options and after estimating the required disk space. You should decide carefully what to do to the /var partition, as it's the most used for the mail and web servers. If you don't change the default locations for Gentoo, you will have /var/www for the webserver and /var/spool for the MTA and local delivery of mail. You should consider the filesystem to use and splitting the /var partition into separate partitions as /var/spool, /var/imap and /var/www. If you use ext3 you should read the suggestion about the +S option to prevent the system from locking when writing to the partition.
If you want more specific answers please provide a description of your planned solution.
_________________
Jorge.

Your twisted, but hopefully friendly daemon.
AMD64 / x86 / Sparc Gentoo
Help answer || emwrap.sh

[XenoTerraCide]

unrelated: jmbsvicetto do you have a font specified on your signature? it looks really tiny here but everything else looks normal.
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I don't hang out here anymore, try asking on http://unix.stackexchange.com/ if you want my help.

[jmbsvicetto]

[XenoTerraCide]

kinda hard for me to read. I assume you also specified size? reason I'm asking is I just went through the xorg and font's thing on the wiki, and I'm trying to get all font's when browsing in firefox readable without distorting some pages. but if you've set it to be different and that small it's not gonna matter. I'd bump it up one size though. and it would take up less space if you'd take the blank line out.
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