Installing Gentoo on a laptop with HDD and SSD

stormblade · n00b Joined: 06 Sep 2017 Posts: 65

Hello everyone, I'm going to install Gentoo on my HP Pavilion laptop with 1000GB HDD and 128GB SSD and thus I have some questions related to the partitioning of the disks.
1) Which partitions should I use on HDD and SSD? Is there any preferrable configuration of these?
2) What file systems are mostly suitable for each partition? (depending on whether it is on HDD or SSD)
3) Should I consider using a swap partition? I have 8GB RAM.
Also, I'm pretty new to Gentoo and only once had some experience of installing it on another machine (I didn't finish because I couldn't handle some problems with grub2 installation in the very end). So, any explanations are welcome, as I'm still learning all the stuff now

charles17 · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2008 Posts: 3664

Presumed the computer has UEFI, you should have an ESP on each disk used for booting. Partition table should then be gpt. Creating a BIOS boot partition depends on whether you want to install grub2 or go with rEFInd.

Filesystems for the partitions depend on your preferences. There was a recent topic here in the forum about using F2FS for the SSD.

fedeliallalinea · Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 8:02 am Post subject:

I never used a hybrid system with SSD/HDD, then wait another real user exerience.
Anyway, in my opinion, in ssd disk I'd put root partition while in hdd home partition.
A swap can help with compilation of bigger packages if you have only 8GB RAM,
also if you want hibernate swap can be used for this purpose (not strictly required since you can use a swapfile).
Now I'm not sure if swap space it's better in hdd or ssd.
Another thing to keep in mind is /var/tmp/portage (TMPDIR) how portage unpack,
compile and install package before merge in the real paths. Usually is more safe (for hdd/ssd) add this in a tmpfs,
but if you don't wont add this in tmpfs maybe is better put in hdd (not sure) for reduces ssd access.
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HungGarTiger · Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 10:30 am Post subject:

nokilli · Apprentice Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 196

I would consider using bcache if I were you. It's now part of the kernel.

Device Drivers -> Multiple Devices Driver Support (RAID and LVM) -> Block device as cache

I've been using it now for about a month and can report great success (caveat: I'm running exclusively in writethrough mode so far). I'm using a 1TB HDD as backing device and a 128GB SSD partitioned 32GB for swap and the rest as a cache device. Dramatically simplifies how you partition your drives because now performance simply isn't a factor and you can just roll with what you need, as you need it. Excellent documentation at Documentation/bcache.txt.

Of course you will need your own initramfs if you put root on the bcache. I don't know if genkernel & co. support bcache yet but if you already have your own init script it's really just adding a few extra lines of bash. That does mean however if you choose to put other distros on the same bcache (perhaps on their own lv's) you'll need to sort out how they work that stuff out to fully integrate because you'll probably have to add support for bcache yourself (seems to be that way with Ubuntu for instance) and the other distros aren't Gentoo so there's alchemy involved I'm sure.

It's been such a successful experience that I'm considering going back to a RAID5 for root. I would probably want to go writeback mode then.

And continue making backups. :wink:

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mrbassie · l33t Joined: 31 May 2013 Posts: 772 Location: over here

I have a pavillion with the same disk layout, I put / on the ssd and /boot (50G), swap (8G) and /home (rest of disk) on the spinning rust. Grub2 installed to the big disk.

As for filesystems you probably don't want to go with anything too exotic to begin with, perhaps something like ext4 for / and xfs for /home. Or maybe just ext across the board
You can always back up and change later on.

Good luck with your install.

EDIT: If you've got the same optimus setup as my laptop has prepare yourself for at least a week of headaches trying to get a machine that can run games without running insanely hot all the time (I should be able to help you there with posting configs and such)
If you're not interested in games go all intel for gfx.

stormblade · n00b Joined: 06 Sep 2017 Posts: 65

Thanks for advice guys, however I faced some other problems during the installation. My laptop has uefi-csm interface (I can disable uefi features like secure boot and activate legacy bios), so I first tried to install gentoo with the minimal cd. It is said in the handbook that by the 20th of april of this year the minimal cd can't boot in uefi mode, so I disabled secure boot, activated legacy and tried to boot. However, the usb flash drive wasn't even seen by the laptop as a bootable device, which seems really strange to me. I then tried activating uefi back, flashing the minimal cd .iso on the flash drive once again with some other options (first mbr for devices with bios/uefi, then gpt for devices with uefi), but all useless - the flash drive is not shown as a bootable device neither in bios nor in uefi mode. I think that it is not, however, the problem of the flash drive as I used it for linux installations before successfully.
After having not found information about the causes of my problem, I decided to use the 2Gb hybrid .iso. However, the usb flash wasn't shown as a bootable device again, but I was able to boot it using the recovery option in win10 parameters (it said that this is a efi device, probably because I used the gpt partitioning when flashing the .iso on usb flash drive. It didn't work, however, with the minimal cd). As far as I understand, I am supposed to do quite the same things as those written in the handbook. However, i had some issue - the ifconfig command (and other similar commands) didn't show me the wireless interface as an available one, only "lo" and "eno1", so i couldn't proceed with the installation. This is, again, seems strange to me as during the previous try of gentoo installation I configured the wireless interface on another laptop with no problems.
So, my question is - why was I facing so much problems with the usb drive and how am I supposed to configure the wireless network if the system can't detect the wireless interface?

charles17 · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2008 Posts: 3664

You should have used a sysresccd USB stick as installation medium. It does boot from UEFI and has support for (almost) all wifi hardware.
Legacy boot should be off
For wifi device, see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wifi

mirekm · Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2017 11:54 am Post subject:

I use such a config.
on SSD I have:

and on HDD:

the root partition I mount with ro options, so there are several tricks more to keep system running.

stormblade · n00b Joined: 06 Sep 2017 Posts: 65

HungGarTiger · Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2017 7:42 pm Post subject:

stormblade · n00b Joined: 06 Sep 2017 Posts: 65

charles17 · Advocate Joined: 02 Mar 2008 Posts: 3664

DONAHUE · see result: 4.9.47-std510-amd64 run

If you boot a current sysresccd and see the following
run

keremCozin · n00b Joined: 18 Sep 2017 Posts: 23

stormblade · n00b Joined: 06 Sep 2017 Posts: 65

DONAHUE · Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 1:21 pm Post subject:

https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new/issues/267 Realtek has not provided linux driver and firmware for the rtl8723de (Device [10ec:d723]) so the kernel driver does not exist yet.
Suggest a cheap usb nic until the de driver exists.
Good question charles17
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stormblade · n00b Joined: 06 Sep 2017 Posts: 65

DONAHUE · Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:20 pm Post subject:

Sorry I should not have used nic, caused confusion
do a google search for "usb wifi adaptor" you will see what I meant to say, Should be able to see serviceable items from US $10 and up.
then find a local shop, take the laptop with the sysresccd there and try until you get one that works. For laptop use the mini 150mbps ones are good as the adaptor can stay in the laptop without fear of physical damage.
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praka123 · Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 9:48 pm Post subject:

As per Larry Finger (maintainer), the RTL8723DE driver can be expected by the end of this year quoting RealTek. https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new/issues/270

I would like to know, if there's any other hack to get the card to work including Ndiswrapper. Any luck?
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stormblade · n00b Joined: 06 Sep 2017 Posts: 65

praka123 · Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 7:23 pm Post subject: