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rabcor
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 1:07 am    Post subject: Partition Setup questions Reply with quote

I (sortof) finished setting this up on my laptop now, next up is my main PC.
What do you recommend for a partition setup... my current setup would be like this

sda
1 100mb ntfs: bootmgr
2 60GB ntfs: windows
3 100mb ext2: /boot
4 extended 50GB
5 10GB reiserfs: /usr/portage
6 10GB reiserfs: /var
7 25GB reiserfs: /
8 5GB ext4: /home

(sdb
1 465GB ntfs: /home/games

sdc
1 3TB ntfs: /home/storage)

this is just something someone recommended to me, and to be honest i don't know why i should do this, and how this is better than just

1 ntfs: bootmgr
2 ntfs: windows
3 ext2: /boot
4 reiserfs: /
(with all partitions as primary)

and i don't have a good filesystem comparison either, why i should use this over this or this over this, etc. i guess each is suited to its own task...

Also, when i select reiserfs on the gentoo install (in parted or fdisk) do i get reiser3 or reiser4?
I'm gonna be setting this stuff up on an ssd
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

rabcor,

Use ext4 for your filesystem as you will be using a SSD. Be sure to read up about the trim option.
Trim erases your data when the space is freed on the filesystem, rather than just before you write. erase is a very slow operation on a SSD.
It doesn't matter when the drive is new as its all erased anyway but when all the space has been used once and you are writing over the top of old 'data' it maintains the write speed.

If you use reiserfs, you get 3.6 as thats whats in the kernel. You need a special boot disk to have reiserfs 4 on /
Whatever you choose be sure it supports trim.

Unless this box will be a server, keep both /usr and /var on root, not in their own partitions as it saves some boot time complications.

You don't mention swap. You should have a swap that is either 512Mb (if you ever need more you are doing it wrong) or if you want to hibernate to swap, make swap the same size as your RAM.

If you don't know why you want a more complex partiting scheme, don't do it. Think KISS.

Not having swap does not mean your system will not or cannot swap. It removes one of the swapping mechanisims is all and forces things to be kept in RAM that are not needed.
The kernel will still swap by dropping code or data that has a permanent home on disk when it need the RAM, rather than writing out dynamically allocated memory to swap space.
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Computer users fall into two groups:-
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rabcor
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Joined: 05 Apr 2012
Posts: 200

PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 6:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
rabcor,

Use ext4 for your filesystem as you will be using a SSD. Be sure to read up about the trim option.
Trim erases your data when the space is freed on the filesystem, rather than just before you write. erase is a very slow operation on a SSD.
It doesn't matter when the drive is new as its all erased anyway but when all the space has been used once and you are writing over the top of old 'data' it maintains the write speed.

If you use reiserfs, you get 3.6 as thats whats in the kernel. You need a special boot disk to have reiserfs 4 on /
Whatever you choose be sure it supports trim.

Unless this box will be a server, keep both /usr and /var on root, not in their own partitions as it saves some boot time complications.

You don't mention swap. You should have a swap that is either 512Mb (if you ever need more you are doing it wrong) or if you want to hibernate to swap, make swap the same size as your RAM.

If you don't know why you want a more complex partiting scheme, don't do it. Think KISS.

Not having swap does not mean your system will not or cannot swap. It removes one of the swapping mechanisims is all and forces things to be kept in RAM that are not needed.
The kernel will still swap by dropping code or data that has a permanent home on disk when it need the RAM, rather than writing out dynamically allocated memory to swap space.


Woah thanks a lot for useful info!
I had heard from many people that theres no use for swap anymore.

I had already (by the time i got to reading this) set my disk up with just... /boot as ext2 and / as ext4, its a good thing that that fits with what you said i should do, but i do not have a swap, and i also disabled the support for it in the kernel, i could reenable it in the kernel, but i'm not familiar with how to shrink partitions in linux, i didn't see such an option in parted, fdisk or cfdisk but i'll work on setting up a 512Mb swap partition now, thanks.
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