Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Gentoo Forums
Quick Search: in
Hard disk partitioning
View unanswered posts
View posts from last 24 hours

Goto page 1, 2  Next  
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Installing Gentoo
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 4:32 am    Post subject: Hard disk partitioning Reply with quote

Hi everyone,
I've been using Ubuntu for last 4 years, Now I want to switch to Gentoo (to learn more).
In last 4 years I've realized, I need separate home partition to port easily.

So this question is bit opinion based:
I received 750GB hybrid HDD for my laptop yesterday :D
I was thinking 150GB for system and 600GB for home.
I wanted community opinion, (My Ubuntu system space never exceeded more than 30GB so I'm assuming 150GB will be plenty)
but then again I never used Gentoo before.

Thanks
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
cach0rr0
Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva


Joined: 13 Nov 2008
Posts: 4123
Location: Houston, Republic of Texas

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 4:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

30GB is a fairly conservative figure for everything minus home.
you can get by with significantly less (i have full installs with just 16GB - building bigger packages gets sporty, but still manageable - and people do get by with much less in certain setups)

your 150GB for the system partition will be more than sufficient. way overkill in fact, but breathing room is nice.

If you want to give yourself space to be a complete pack rat with installing all kinds of crap, and never cleaning up old source tarballs, 50GB seems like a nice round number that should do the job, with plenty of room left over.
_________________
Lost configuring your system?
dump lspci -n here | see Pappy's guide | Link Stash
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
BillWho
Veteran
Veteran


Joined: 03 Mar 2012
Posts: 1600
Location: US

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 4:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wisemonkey,

Welcome to gentoo - the fun has just begun :D

IMHO 150Gig would be a big waste of disk space. 16Gig for this lappy w/47% used.
_________________
Good luck :wink:

Since installing gentoo, my life has become one long emerge :)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 5:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

cach0rr0 wrote:
30GB is a fairly conservative figure for everything minus home.
you can get by with significantly less (i have full installs with just 16GB - building bigger packages gets sporty, but still manageable - and people do get by with much less in certain setups)

your 150GB for the system partition will be more than sufficient. way overkill in fact, but breathing room is nice.

If you want to give yourself space to be a complete pack rat with installing all kinds of crap, and never cleaning up old source tarballs, 50GB seems like a nice round number that should do the job, with plenty of room left over.


Thanks,
I was thinking something similar.
However 150GB just cause I'm pretty sure I'll end up making mess here and there while I'm new to building from scratch.
And even 600GB for home is plenty, especially with external HDD space being cheap for all the stuff like movies, games etc.

while we are at the topic, I'm going to follow http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml for installation process. (I've core2Duo)
Is there some advice I should follow apart from handbook?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 5:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

BillWho wrote:
wisemonkey,

Welcome to gentoo - the fun has just begun :D

IMHO 150Gig would be a big waste of disk space. 16Gig for this lappy w/47% used.


Thanks :)

Looks like I'll end up using 30GB-50GB for system, I'll let you guys know
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
BillWho
Veteran
Veteran


Joined: 03 Mar 2012
Posts: 1600
Location: US

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 5:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wisemonkey,

I use mint/debian (lmde) live dvd for the installation. Although there is an installation cd for gentoo, it's not really necessary.

All you need is a terminal and internet connection to dl the stage3 and portage tarballs.

Also, you can use gparted for partitioning and formatting your disk :wink:
_________________
Good luck :wink:

Since installing gentoo, my life has become one long emerge :)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 5:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks guys,
I'll update you from gentoo hopefully :)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
cach0rr0
Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva


Joined: 13 Nov 2008
Posts: 4123
Location: Houston, Republic of Texas

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 7:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wisemonkey wrote:


Thanks,
I was thinking something similar.
However 150GB just cause I'm pretty sure I'll end up making mess here and there while I'm new to building from scratch.
And even 600GB for home is plenty, especially with external HDD space being cheap for all the stuff like movies, games etc.

while we are at the topic, I'm going to follow http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml for installation process. (I've core2Duo)
Is there some advice I should follow apart from handbook?


as far as pointers go:
-follow the handbook

-when you get to the point of configuring a kernel, go the manual route, read Pappy's guide, use one of his seeds. People tend to generally be ok with a gentoo install up to the point of getting a working kernel. Not just using one of Pappy's seeds, but actually *reading* his guide takes out a lot of the guesswork. Up front it looks more painful than it is, but it's totally not. Build in the drivers for your HDD controller and filesystems, build in the drivers you need based on the lspci -n output (see my signature), and if you install properly, you should be smooth sailing

-instead of trying to use the "official" minimal .iso, my preference is using SystemRescueCD. It's based on gentoo, and the handbook procedures match up exactly. Others have suggested Linux Mint livecd's, or Ubuntu. These work just fine. As long as the linux livecd you choose has the tools the handbook requires, you should be fine.

Best of luck, and if you get stuck, thats why the forums are here!
_________________
Lost configuring your system?
dump lspci -n here | see Pappy's guide | Link Stash
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
cwr
Veteran
Veteran


Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Posts: 1969

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 8:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I use 128MB for /boot, and 16GB for /, /usr/portage, /var, and /home with several other very large
directories containing eg: music and backup archives which are mounted on /home. I also have a small
entirely separate partition containing a second install which boots to a shell and which I use for maintenance.

That's proved a pretty flexible and useful setup over the years, particularly the separate /boot.
My laptops get a bit neurotic if you mess with their master boot record, so I boot through the
inevitable Windows to the grub partition, and once that has been set up I never have to touch Grub
(Classic) again apart from editing grub.conf.

The only partition I've ever had get corrupted enough to need reformatting (ext3/4) is /var,
and that was a while back.

Will
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 4:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

cach0rr0 wrote:


as far as pointers go:
-follow the handbook

-when you get to the point of configuring a kernel, go the manual route, read Pappy's guide, use one of his seeds. People tend to generally be ok with a gentoo install up to the point of getting a working kernel. Not just using one of Pappy's seeds, but actually *reading* his guide takes out a lot of the guesswork. Up front it looks more painful than it is, but it's totally not. Build in the drivers for your HDD controller and filesystems, build in the drivers you need based on the lspci -n output (see my signature), and if you install properly, you should be smooth sailing

-instead of trying to use the "official" minimal .iso, my preference is using SystemRescueCD. It's based on gentoo, and the handbook procedures match up exactly. Others have suggested Linux Mint livecd's, or Ubuntu. These work just fine. As long as the linux livecd you choose has the tools the handbook requires, you should be fine.

Best of luck, and if you get stuck, thats why the forums are here!


I'm reading through pappy's guide.
Why is it recommended to use SystemRescue over minimal?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 4:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

cwr wrote:
I use 128MB for /boot, and 16GB for /, /usr/portage, /var, and /home with several other very large
directories containing eg: music and backup archives which are mounted on /home. I also have a small
entirely separate partition containing a second install which boots to a shell and which I use for maintenance.

That's proved a pretty flexible and useful setup over the years, particularly the separate /boot.
My laptops get a bit neurotic if you mess with their master boot record, so I boot through the
inevitable Windows to the grub partition, and once that has been set up I never have to touch Grub
(Classic) again apart from editing grub.conf.

The only partition I've ever had get corrupted enough to need reformatting (ext3/4) is /var,
and that was a while back.

Will


Thanks, it looks quite organized to have separate /boot and /, plus if anything goes wrong it would be easier to fix.
Is there specific reason to have /var and /usr/portage on separate partitions?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
lost+found
Guru
Guru


Joined: 15 Nov 2004
Posts: 509
Location: North~Sea~Coa~s~~t~~~

PostPosted: Sun Mar 17, 2013 8:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wisemonkey wrote:
...
Is there some advice I should follow apart from handbook?


On my core2duo I use:

- Extra USE flags in /etc/portage/make.conf: sse3 ssse3. Not automatically enabled by selecting a desktop profile only (sse, sse2 and mmx are included automatically). To check all USE flags: "emerge --info" .
You can check "cat /proc/cpuinfo" that you're cpu is capable: sse3=pni there.

- CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe" For amd64. Keeps safe and stable.

- MAKEOPTS="-j3" 2 cores, +1 in general, for some speed in compiling.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
cach0rr0
Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva


Joined: 13 Nov 2008
Posts: 4123
Location: Houston, Republic of Texas

PostPosted: Sun Mar 17, 2013 9:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wisemonkey wrote:


I'm reading through pappy's guide.
Why is it recommended to use SystemRescue over minimal?


just tends to be smoother sailing. especially if youre doing the install via wireless connection
all of the little niggling issues that seem to happen with the minimal cd, dont seem to happen with sysrescuecd

it's what i use for all of my installs, at least. YMMV
_________________
Lost configuring your system?
dump lspci -n here | see Pappy's guide | Link Stash
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 2:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

lost+found wrote:
wisemonkey wrote:
...
Is there some advice I should follow apart from handbook?


On my core2duo I use:

- Extra USE flags in /etc/portage/make.conf: sse3 ssse3. Not automatically enabled by selecting a desktop profile only (sse, sse2 and mmx are included automatically). To check all USE flags: "emerge --info" .
You can check "cat /proc/cpuinfo" that you're cpu is capable: sse3=pni there.

- CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe" For amd64. Keeps safe and stable.

- MAKEOPTS="-j3" 2 cores, +1 in general, for some speed in compiling.


I didn't understand Extra USE flags for sse3 and ssse3, I've already set CFLAGS and MAKEOPTS as you have shown.

Anyways I'm at a point where I'm reading about USE flags, and I'm confused do I need to switch on all flags I need to use?
For e.g. I need gnome, aac, lame, gtk, X etc. and many more. USE flags list seem to be quite long to go through and setup all of those or are there some flags by default?
Or I can add support for others later (after system starts)?, I guess this is the case still need to confirm.

Thanks
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
lost+found
Guru
Guru


Joined: 15 Nov 2004
Posts: 509
Location: North~Sea~Coa~s~~t~~~

PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 9:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wisemonkey wrote:
...
do I need to switch on all flags I need to use?
For e.g. I need gnome, aac, lame, gtk, X etc. and many more. USE flags list seem to be quite long to go through and setup all of those or are there some flags by default?
Or I can add support for others later (after system starts)?, I guess this is the case still need to confirm.

Thanks


By selecting a profile, you'll get a default set of USE flags. That's a good starting point. So "eselect profile list" and "eselect profile set <number>" let you choose the nature of your installation. As you mentioned Gnome, "default/linux/amd64/13.0/desktop/gnome" is your profile. If you enter "emerge --info" now, you'll see all USE flags that are enabled by default. You only have to make exceptions, for the things you don't want, or extra USE flags. Put them in /etc/portage/make.conf as USE="...", as exceptions to your profile. Or put them in /etc/portage/package.use, for single packages.

Some media packages have optional support for your processor, so you may add USE="sse3 ssse3" to /etc/portage/make.conf. This is fine tuning of your software, you can do it later too, and keep the default USE flags for now to save time.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
cwr
Veteran
Veteran


Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Posts: 1969

PostPosted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 9:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wisemonkey wrote:
[

Thanks, it looks quite organized to have separate /boot and /, plus if anything goes wrong it would be easier to fix.
Is there specific reason to have /var and /usr/portage on separate partitions?


They both have a lot of files that come and go, and having them on separate partitions reduces fragmentation
for what that's worth. On older, smaller systems with partitions <8G you probably need to set up /usr/portage
with extra inodes to handle all the small files in the directory tree.

And yes, one of the reasons I split things up is to make them easier to fix, since Gentoo is generally used
for tinkering. I wouldn't bother splitting stuff up with eg: a Ubuntu installation.

Will
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 5:55 pm    Post subject: Installation details Reply with quote

Hey everyone thanks a lot for all your inputs.
This morning I got my system running with Gentoo :D

I ended up with following configuration (don't yell at me for inefficient config :? this laptop is completely testing place before putting stuff on servers / computers):
/boot - 42GB sda1
swap - 8GB sda2
/ - 50GB sda5
/usr - 50GB sda6
/opt - 50GB sda7 (I'm not planning to run any game server, but I'll test few)
/var - 50GB sda8 (again not planing to run mail server but I test kolab and such on this laptop before server)
/home - remaining sda9 (450GB, I was assuming 500GB but I'll look into size later)

It was fun going through and knowing my system some more to install gentoo. Though I didn't test wireless, sound, video yet :P

Anyways I'm planning to follow https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-953872.html and similar to get setup with x environment (I've selected profile as gnome so I'm assuming its already there)
If you have any other suggestions please share.

Thanks
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
lost+found
Guru
Guru


Joined: 15 Nov 2004
Posts: 509
Location: North~Sea~Coa~s~~t~~~

PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 9:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Best way is picking all official howto's you need from:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml

and: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Intel_Microcode
for the latest firmware fixes for the core2duo
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
KLarsen
n00b
n00b


Joined: 30 Dec 2005
Posts: 61
Location: Spain

PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

42GB for /boot is waayyy too much, you really don't need more than 30-50MB. My boot partition is only 32MB and I've never had a problem with space.

Apart from that, my partition setup looks like this:
/ 15GB (only using about 50% of the space, for a desktop system with KDE).
swap 1GB though I never use it. How much RAM does you laptop have? 8GB swap seems a lot.
/var 8GB
/usr/portage 13GB for all those distfiles
/var/tmp and /tmp on TMPFS as I'm running root on an SSD.

Of course, it has taken me a few years to get to this partition layout, and it works for me with the programs I'm running. So just keep experimenting and you'll arrive at a good layout.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
lost+found
Guru
Guru


Joined: 15 Nov 2004
Posts: 509
Location: North~Sea~Coa~s~~t~~~

PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

KLarsen wrote:
42GB for /boot is waayyy too much, you really don't need more than 30-50MB. My boot partition is only ...


Enough space to park some LiveDVD images, and run from grub. 8)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
frostschutz
Advocate
Advocate


Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Posts: 2977
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 5:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

30-50MB is way too small for /boot. The time when a Linux kernel fit on a 1.44M floppy disk are long over. Depending on the complexity of your Initramfs you may go up to 10M for a single kernel these days; if you want to keep a dozen old ones around just in case, you're already way past the 30-50MB for kernels alone, not counting grub, possibly themes, memtest, and all the other stuff that goes into a comfortable /boot. So go for at least 256M or something to be comfortable.

I actually upped that to 1G because hey, room to spare on my 16G USB stick despite Live CDs. (2G FreeDOS - also accessible from windows, 1G /boot, 10G for LiveCD ISOs, and the remaining 2G a Linux partition for any other temporary/mobile file storage needs that may come up, eg. when editing something I want to keep in one of the live systems).

@lost+found: great avatar :) miss this guy
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 5:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks KLarsen, lost+found and frostschutz

As I said I'm pretty sure I didn't do partitioning very efficiently, but I'll take my time maybe few years to figure out what works for me.
But I like to get opinions, glad to know I can put liveCD in boot and directly use it that way (though I'm yet to figure out how)

I'm already following http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml to get xorg and gnome working.

I also look for what worked for others (sometimes can be very helpful :D)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2013 5:00 am    Post subject: Stuck at X Reply with quote

First of all I feel at this point I should start new thread but as you will see there exist exactly same thread (I want to try to resolve before going back to compiling kernel)

I followed guides to install (enable) proper devices and X
Then installed gnome

However starting x gives me an error "No devices detected"

I feel like I'm facing something similar to https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-889962-highlight-number+created+screens+match+number+detected+devices.html

I do see that number of created screen don't match number of detected devices. in my case as well.

That one is resolved by compiling kernel again, I wanted to know if I should try other things before going back to installation.

Thanks
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
cwr
Veteran
Veteran


Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Posts: 1969

PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2013 8:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

if you look in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc you'll find a reference at the end of the file to a "fallback"
windowing setup using twm, xterm and xclock. I usually emerge those packages for just
that reason, to test X before trying to start a heavyweight windowing system like Gnome.
It might be worth trying that, to see if it gives you a clearer error message.

Will
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
wisemonkey
n00b
n00b


Joined: 14 Mar 2013
Posts: 45

PostPosted: Thu Mar 21, 2013 3:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

cwr wrote:
if you look in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc you'll find a reference at the end of the file to a "fallback"
windowing setup using twm, xterm and xclock. I usually emerge those packages for just
that reason, to test X before trying to start a heavyweight windowing system like Gnome.
It might be worth trying that, to see if it gives you a clearer error message.

Will


Thanks
Well I tried to emerge and build genkernel just to see if that works but it definitely didn't.
Now I screwed up my networking as well :P I'll go start from scratch (from the point of partitioning)
just going to format all partitions. I'll let you guys know :)
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Gentoo Forums Forum Index Installing Gentoo All times are GMT
Goto page 1, 2  Next
Page 1 of 2

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum