-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 jdd wrote:

Pascal Bleser wrote: ...

...

automatically propose the default partitioning setup with LVM. I never could know what, with LVM, happens of the system file if _one_ disk (or partition) is destroyed. is not the entire file system destroyed?

Actually, when you have several (physical) harddisks in an LVM Volume Group (which can be seen as a virtual disk) and one of them crashes, the whole Volume Group is corrupted on the blocks that were stored on the broken harddisk. I never had the case (and on critical/production systems, I use it on top of software or hardware RAID anyway, see below), so I don't know how LVM behaves exactly, but it's pretty obvious from the way LVM works. To avoid that, you must use LVM on top of RAID (e.g. mirroring), which is feasible too (and works pretty well), although there was a little bugger in YaST2's partitioner with previous releases (don't know about 10.0) where you couldn't create LVM on top of RAID on one pass: one had to first create the RAID partitions, then reboot and start the installation again, then create the LVM on top of the RAID partitions. As I said, I didn't check that on 10.0 (and I don't have spare partitions to test that on, at the moment). When using LVM on top of RAID (not RAID 0, obviously), the RAID subsystem makes sure data is mirrored and when one disk dies, etc etc.. And LVM builds its Volume Groups and Logical Volumes on top of the RAID, which means that when one physical disk dies, you don't loose any data. - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD4DBQFDECbWr3NMWliFcXcRAkiEAJ45hL6KMxBO2yzK3/5qIVL6RCc0BgCY8Lep ahO0KTbP0F8YMxSKp33s0w== =HvLK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Pascal Bleser wrote:

Fedora (at least on FC4) is taking another interesting direction: from what I've heard, they seem to automatically propose the default partitioning setup with LVM. (I didn't say SUSE should do that as well, I said "interesting" ;)). Has a number of pros and cons.

As long as software-related constructions like LVM keeps stable (i.e. no heavy changes of internal structures ...) that could be an idea. One problem could be as soon as you need to access your system for repair using another boot media and the LVM isn't compatible anymore ... Similar things apply to software-RAID as well. To sum up my thoughts: I will stay with "true" partitioning on the harddisk. Might be conservative somehow, but works for my situation pretty good ... Best regards, Reinhard.

Yesss, Pascal has summarized it very well! LVM is not for home users with 1-2 disks. But it is for enterprise sites with big and growing databases. With LVM it is easy to add new physical volumes (hard disks) and increase size of a filesystem meanwhile it is in use. Mirroring hard disks behind logical volumes will produce more durable safety of datas. Combine it with a storage area system (ex. SSA, SHARK) and you will get an almost undestroyable system. (Of course it won't prevent human errors... ;-) ) It is possible to play around LVM at home to learn, to test, to examine. But storing my personals documents, emails, game saves, pictures, music or movies on LVM volumes at home ( on 2 or 3 hdds :-D LoL) not a good idea. Leave it to corporate users and IT system supervisors. Regards, Zolix 2005. augusztus 27. 11.02 dátummal Pascal Bleser ezt írta: ...

On Sat, Aug 27, 2005 at 08:48:43AM +0100, James Ogley wrote:

...

Is there a reason that /home is not on its own partition anymore by default?

Is this on a fresh install?

IIRC it never has been, you've always had to do it manually with the expert partitioner.

Yes. I think 7.x or 8.x. -- houghi http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

On Sat, Aug 27, 2005 at 04:40:22PM +0200, mike wrote:

Uhh, nope.. I've got all of them from 5.3 to opensuse, and it's never been the default when I've installed.

Then my minds must be departing with me on a certain level. Also because I always went to change the settings after loosing al my data with a first upgrade, I don't look that close at it. -- houghi http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

On Sat, Aug 27, 2005 at 10:24:34AM +0200, Marco Maske wrote:

houghi wrote:

...

Is there a reason that /home is not on its own partition anymore by default?

Yes, you can do that easy with Yast.

Yes, there is a reason or Yes it can be done? I am aware that it is done very easy. I just am wondering why it is not done by default. If you want to have the easiest, most friendly and simplified distribution, I think that this should be something that is inlcuded as default. If you do not like that default setting, you will still be able to change it. On Usenet I constantly hear: How can I upgrade from versiobn X to version Y and the answer is always the same: Try an update, if it won't work, do a new install and if youu do a new install, make a /home partition. That will be easier for the next time you want to update or do a new instalation. The fact that it can be changed easily does not mean that the defaults should be the same. -- houghi http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

On Saturday 27 August 2005 15:10, Andreas Girardet wrote:

I do agree totally. The default are the ones the user sees. /home is crucial. Also /boot should be reinstated since grub has been playing up on some systems of mine with the silly 1024 limit! I cannot believe that that is still around. As a lilo user from way back I kind of gotten used to forget this 1024 limit.

That's usually a BIOS problem, not a boot loader problem. Since lilo and grub learned to use the extended BIOS calls, as long as the BIOS can read beyond 1024, they won't have problems, but if the BIOS is old or broken, it will still be there. I doubt it's common enough to warrant doing it by default, but it may be possible to detect if the BIOS can handle it and do it in those cases

I think thats a good idea ! maybe we could another point into it: when I install SUSE (9.3 also as the betas) the installer suggest to delete 3 partions on my sda1 and wants to use the holse disk for /swap - and that is 173 GB of space. a littlebit mutch, I think ;)

but after your [Andreas] discussion about grub and vmware it should realy better when someone else does it. I would - but I have already /boot and /home on seperated disks, so what should I report ?

In general doing such automated layout is pretty difficult, because it difficulty is growing exponentially with the number of mounts. However, the logic in the YAST Partitioner is GPL and we are open for changes. :) Ciao, Marcus

JBScout [Thomas Lodewick] wrote:

...

Should we open a request in bugzilla for this? Who wants to do it ...

please, don't. using a special partiton for home will immediatly get you in troubles if you use more than one Linux on the same computer (and with the same /home). You must be more tricky. see http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Install_Another_Distribution the main part being: * it's also very useful (but not mandatory) to have a data partition to receive all your own data. _not your home, only your important data_. the fact is /home/login is hosting config data for nearly all the apps you use and these configs can be different from a version to an other (think going from kernel 2.4 to 2.6). So apps _datas_ should be on a separate partition, mounted anywhere and _linked_ to each separate home as needed. this is very handy but very difficult to teach to a newcommer. A solution (?) should be to create /home normally but adding a data partition (ideally on an other drive) linke to ~/Documents, for example part of my home (see the links): beta drwxr-xr-x 2 jdd users 1408 2005-08-26 07:57 bin lrwxrwxrwx 1 jdd users 12 2005-08-15 14:35 data -> /data3/data/ drwx------ 2 jdd users 336 2005-08-26 20:28 Desktop drwxr-xr-x 5 jdd users 800 2005-08-27 14:00 Documents lrwxrwxrwx 1 jdd users 16 2005-08-15 14:36 download -> /data3/download/ drwxr-xr-x 4 jdd users 96 2005-08-26 20:24 GNUstep lrwxrwxrwx 1 jdd users 15 2005-08-15 14:35 gravure -> /data3/gravure/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 jdd users 12 2005-08-20 14:51 lycee -> /data3/lycee lrwxrwxrwx 1 jdd users 15 2005-08-15 14:36 photos2 -> /data3/photos2/ drwxr-xr-x 2 jdd users 80 2005-08-14 22:48 public_html drwxr-xr-x 5 jdd users 192 2005-08-27 12:21 temp -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2005-08-20 20:06 test3 lrwxrwxrwx 1 jdd users 15 2005-08-15 14:35 valerie -> /data3/valerie/ If I'm not clear enough, I can get details. jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Andreas Girardet wrote:

...

JBScout [Thomas Lodewick] wrote: please, don't. using a special partiton for home will immediatly get you in troubles if you use more than one Linux on the same computer (and with the same /home).

It might, indeed. On the other hand, it's also a very interesting option for upgrading. That's usually how I do it: - - create a new partition (ok, I have LVM everywhere, so that's pretty easy) - - do a fresh install of the new SUSE release on that partition - - specify my separate /home partition to be mounted on /home - - reboot, test if everything works as expected - - and maybe remove the old version But even for people who don't proceed that way, to me the pros and cons of having a separate /home can be summarized like this: + much easier to upgrade with a fresh install (instead of upgrade), which is often the best option when you skip one or two SUSE releases (say, from 9.1 to 10.0) (and I know quite a few people who don't buy/download every single SUSE release, so I don't think that scenario is uncommon) + much easier to change your Linux distribution - certainly something Novell doesn't like to consider but... being a "good citizen" for the user is the better attitude IMHO, this isn't Windows that forces you to format and install over the whole harddisk, whatever is already installed - - might, in some cases, not be a good idea when you have 2 or more Linux installations that are too different and you mount that /home on both (*) - - partition sizing might be unappropriate over time: especially beginners don't know how to size the partitions (say, / and /home) and maybe their /home ends up being too small or too large over time (**) (*) although that's rather something "advanced" users (Andreas, don't use "geek" ;)) would do and I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing if they mount their /home on several Linux installations (**) partition resizing works quite well with ext2/ext3/reiserfs and is very easy to use with YaST2's partitioner, although that's most probably the only real drawback of using a separate partition for /home

Since having muliple Linuxes is a special requirement only quite knowledeable people have,I would assume that such a person would be able to kilcik into the partitioner and choose his/her own partition too. The Indeed.

default setting should be thought for a normal user and such a user would be pretty stuffed without precautions on seperating /home from the rest of the system, IMHO. Such a user is probably not going to be very familiar with partitioning concepts. Yes, that's the point. The partitioning proposal must be targetted at /beginners/, not advanced users.

cheers - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ _\_v The more things change, the more they stay insane. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDEXVVr3NMWliFcXcRApdYAJwKYvYJHSl+D9O6YW1iORzrlRIaHwCeL4+F eH+ncaHnLdnoS+fppsyXOow= =8BbY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

JBScout [Thomas Lodewick] wrote:

ok - whats about this scenario: (asume this only for SUSE, not for other distros

Same for all distros. I think there is a misunderstanding of what is your home. In fact there two very different parts. * your own work, datas, documents. This should be on an other parttion. Many advantages, very easy backups, for examples. * the config data of apps (all the "." files) This last part can be very different from an install to an other. It's not rare for an user to try red hat, mandrake, suse.. gentoo (this last, may be not :-), knoppix, debian... They may be very large differences from one to an other on the way apps are used. That is why the home (~) folder can stay on /. To access your data, last SuSE creates /dataX folders with others partition, so they are easily mounted. it's then enough to link your valuable data to any home folder. for now the only problem (minor) I have had is thunderbird don't accepting links, so I was obliged to copy the .thunderbird folder jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

On Sun, Aug 28, 2005 at 01:14:29PM +0200, JBScout [Thomas Lodewick] wrote:

I understand that this is not a good choice when working with more then one distro. but in a matter of fact whe discus this from the point of "normal" user, or "beginners". I think they wouldn't install another distro so fast.

Indeed. The advaced user would be able to work around the problem and have the same ~/home with different distro's.

maybe it would be a "nice" idea to have some more information in YAST when it cames to the point of how to create the layout of the disk and "/". maybe a button on the left side, or a dialog that asked if the user likes to read some hints about it before the main window chanche to partition.

Yes, info should indeed be given. But first there must be an agreement that a seperate home should be the way to go or not. Once that is done, info must be given. I could see somthing like: Your ~/home, the place where all your personal settings and data is kept will be XYGB. If you are unsure, please click on OK. There could be a radio button below it wher it says: I do not want a seperate ~/home directory and the XYGB should be changabable.

if you read back about this topic in te eMails, you can see: as more people talk about it as more "yes" and "no" you get. so if it can't be a clear "yes, seperate home" or "no, don't do it" then the (new or begining) user should be informated about the pro's and contras, I think. and not only in a manual. if he used the downloaded version of openSUSE - he has not the manual by his hands. and if he uses the boxed version, it may also not present because - if we are realistic - manuals get read first time only when something is broken.

Indeed manuals are not read. I am sure the people at SUSE could ask their coworkers at the helpdesk and they would confirm this. (Or anybody who ever worked at a helpdesk. And for all you people working in the treanches: This one is for you: http://www.ampcast.com/LST-64287-mus-128-6589785-0-0-0-DLDLFQSFQGXZTNZTRE/We... Mor on http://www.ampcast.com/music/22488/artist.php, Because free isn't good enough. It must be open. ;-) ) -- houghi http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

FWIW I add my opinion on this topic. Somebody was asking since many people will be having many different kinds of requirements - some downloading movies and torrents, and some not, I think this will be OK: 1. Calculate the req space for the full install. Add 1 to 2 GB to that for stuff that the user may install themselves. Assign this for /. 2. Calculate the swap in the way it is calculated presently. (I'm running 2 GB swap and it is never used after my 512 MB RAM.) 3. Assign all remaining HD space to home. This way, nobody even who downloads huge torrents or movies can complain that their home folder is insufficient, since even if they had had no separate /home partition, they would not have been able to store their torrents etc after installing SuSE. Or maybe a small change in 1: Calculate the req space for the install that the user has selected and then allow 1 to 2 GB. I would think that anyone who needs a full install will usually be someone who can do the partitioning themselves. What do others think? --    (o-   Penguin #395953 lives at http://samvit.org    //\   subsisting on ancient Indian wisdom ...    V_/_  and modern computing efficiency! :)

If software companies start supporting Linux the user might very well install a 1GB of e.g. Corel Graphics Suite or the latest biggest game.

Usually those programs are installed under /usr/local/. Home directory should just be kept for user files.

Monday 05 Sep 2005 04:14 samaye Langsley alekhiit:

Hi all.

Hello. It would have been easier to get to reading your post if you had trimmed out mine to which you replied! :)

This is my first post to this list. I'm currently running SUSE 9.3. This is my first experience with SUSE

Welcome to SuSE! I've *tried* Mandrake and Red Hat. Neither was comfortable. With SuSE I'm home and dry! :) [Did I get the Inglish idiom right?]

My real reason for responding though is to say that I believe that it is imperative that we aim all installation instructions and programs directly at the beginner. That doesn't mean that an expert or some such alternative can't be offered, only that the basic install must be aimed at the complete novice.

Hear hear. This is already done to a great extent, however.

plan -2 (swap / boot /root /home each on its own partition

On this list or SLE somebody was recently saying that having /boot on its own partition causes problems while upgrading.

that an easily selected option be offered. IE swap size should be: 512M (OK) 1G (OK) or 2G.(OK) or some such.

Yeah, a nice round number should be OK. I've given 2 * 1G swaps. --    (o-   Penguin #395953 lives at http://samvit.org    //\   subsisting on ancient Indian wisdom ...    V_/_  and modern computing efficiency! :)

houghi wrote:

If you want to realy experiment, you can still put ~/home where you want it. For me it still comes down to this: Loose my data with an upgrade, or keep it?

if you use a separate partition for home, the upgrade will use it also, so the risk is the same. I know of a friend installing suse on a windows box. to preserve it's dear windows, don't trusting suse, he went to expert mode... and wiped the disk. hopefully he was an intelligent man, learned from that and did no more the same error :-)

...

To access your data, last SuSE creates /dataX folders with others partition, so they are easily mounted. it's then enough to link your valuable data to any home folder.

I don't get a /dataX if I only have one HD.

but I have only one :-) I use the cheaper PC I could afford some months ago :-(. but on this 80Gb disk, I use really 10Gb permanently (the others not used or used to store cd images) by the way I probably did this manually on the first install and forget it :-( jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

--- houghi wrote:

...

houghi wrote:

...

If you want to realy experiment, you can still

On Sun, Aug 28, 2005 at 03:21:33PM +0200, jdd wrote: put ~/home where you want

...

...

it. For me it still comes down to this: Loose my data with an upgrade, or keep it?

if you use a separate partition for home, the upgrade will use it also, so the risk is the same.

An upgrade would (or could) see the /home partition and not overwrite it

...

I know of a friend installing suse on a windows box. to preserve it's dear windows, don't trusting suse, he went to expert mode... and wiped the disk.

Wiping your disk is domething everybody should have experienced. It is kind of an initiation rite, like a DNS admin forgetting a trailing dot. :-)

...

but I have only one :-) I use the cheaper PC I could afford some months ago :-(. but on this 80Gb disk, I use really 10Gb permanently (the others not used or used to store cd images)

by the way I probably did this manually on the first install and forget it :-(

As far as I can see in this list, most have ~/home on a seperate partition, so why not make it default? Those who do not want it can just change is, just like people can change it now. -- houghi

http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

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"> As far as I can see in this list, most have ~/home

on a seperate partition, so why not make it default? Those who do not want it can just change is, just like people can change it now. "

The default should be in my opinion no seperate partition. Especially with broadband & downloading or potentially downloading tons of data it is absolutly uncertain what size a /home partition would have to be for penguin-average user. And what happens when the partitioin is full ? The user doesnt have write-access to other partitions or shouildn't IMO. A user who just write mails .. chats .. & maybe does a bit of playing with digi-photos of whateva will have completly different space requirements compared to a digital artist or video-person. We cant predict how much is neccessary. Post Scribbles : The user can allways burn her/his data on DVD/CD. ___________________________________________________________ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com

On Sun, Aug 28, 2005 at 05:29:53PM +0200, jdd wrote: <snip> I agree with expet for:

* beginners - don't want to worry (all in /) * enhanced - /boot, /home, /

I would put /home, / for beginner as the will most likely have no idea how to save their data once they upgrade. -- houghi http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

On Sun, Aug 28, 2005 at 08:26:26PM +0200, jdd wrote:

...

I would put /home, / for beginner as the will most likely have no idea how to save their data once they upgrade.

save the data is necessary outside the computer (cd, dvd is the best, or usb drive).

I have a 150GB HD. About 130GB is used. Untill a few days ago I did not even HAVE a DVD burner, just a CD burner. That would have been a LOT of CD's to burn. Even with DVD's it is quit a task.

_any_ disk or partition present on the computer can be lost during any install.

Backing up is a good practice. Unfortunatly this is not always a possibilaty.

I remember a PC with two drives. install red hat. choose option "server".

RH did format _the two disks_ (I never installed red hat after that :-()

If a person has one disk an all on / wth no seperate /home, this wil be standard. -- houghi http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 07:52:42AM +0200, jdd wrote:

houghi wrote:

...

I have a 150GB HD. About 130GB is used. Untill a few days ago I did not even HAVE a DVD burner, just a CD burner. That would have been a LOT of CD's to burn. Even with DVD's it is quit a task.

You like to live dangerously. hard drives are very volatile, for many reasons. USB 300Mb hard drives are quite cheap nowaday, and should be a good backup system.

I know how to do backups. I know what my data is worth and I also know how to put /home on a seperate partition/drive/system. I am also aware that a lot people do NOT have the posibilaty to do what would be wise, whatever the reason. I think that reducing the risk of deleting data should be important. To me that means not backup OR a seperate /home. To me it means backup AND a seperate /home. And the best way to do a backup is to make an image of my data, rename it to Nekid_bridneyspears_Pr0n_movies.rar and put then on torrent. ;-) -- houghi http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

...

...

On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 10:11 am, in message <4312C339.5090102@dodin.org>, jdd@dodin.org wrote: But as to add it as defaults, this not to be done without care. What are the others distributions doing? I don't remember mandrake, debian, knoppix, making a default separate /home (but I may be wrong)

The only place I've personally seen it done by default is Solaris, where you get a small system partition and a huge /export/home by default

On Monday 29 August 2005 10:39, houghi wrote:

For now the things I have heard against the idea come to `we do not know how large the partition should be`. The fact that other distro's don't use it does not autmatocaly mean it is a bad idea.

Mandrake does use it. /dev/hda1 ext3 /; /dev/hda6 ext3 /home. 5.8 GB are alloted for /. -- Pablo Ortúzar

--- jdd wrote:

houghi wrote:

...

For now the things I have heard against the idea come to `we do not know how large the partition should be`. The fact that other distro's don't use it does not autmatocaly mean it is a bad idea.

don't think this is the first time this go to discussion. if this have not already be done mean most people don't agree.

This won't say we must not change it.

The main argument to change to this way is, in my opinion, is the new hudge capacity of the disks. This is new. A current suse system takes 2Gb. A very big one can approach 5Gb. So 10Gb of root should be good. on larger disk, allow 10% if you want. This let room for windows :-( and some external /home partitions.

The only real advantage is a small protection against partition failure.

Protection against update is of no value for me, because there is no reason to update a working system. One may update OpenOffice or Mozilla, but update from, say, suse 9.2 to 9.3 is probably not a good idea. Updating is a windows habit, to correct bugs. There a nearly no bug in the Linux subsystem if you have it running yet (you may experience bugs at the first install). anyway, the risk of mistaking the partition to format or destroying the /home partition is as high as the risk of bad file system on root.

The cons is mostly the added complexity. with a separate /home, one must have a neat /etc/fstab any failure there makes the /home lost (apparently) and need knowledge to fix. and this is frequent when somebody try to cope with mounting cd's :-).

added complexity that make the risk of a _windows_ error greater. Don't forget new users uses frequently they windows dual boot and that the disk center of XP marks linux

partitions as unused. havind a swap is already confusing, but the partition is so small nobody cares, but a big /home ??

jdd

-- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

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With all the potential problems that could arise with having additional partitions it really doesn't seem worth it if it is a setup for a first time linux-user. What jdd wrote about updating being a Windows thing is true in a way. A Windows update which many do I hope for the securty & bug-fixes is the equivalent of YOU under SuSE. It is not equivalent to a new SuSE-Linux version ... that would be equal to a Windows-Upgrade which I think very few do. And fact is new Windows versions come out once every few years & usually not twice a year like SuSE. Once they have a reasonably running system they stick with it & wont want to transfer their data to a new Windows-Version which they would have to pay for. All these Win98's & Win95's are there cause they do their job & more is not needed. If it isn't broken dont fix it. People can allways save all their data on a DVD if they want to take it with them. Question then might be ... will/do normal (non-geek/non-new kernel version interested etc.) users behave like they did with Windows & stick with e.g. Version 10 for years (higher support needs) or will they continuesly upgrade ? ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

I changed the subject, because the points I will mention down, are more about the policies openSUSE follows. Who finally decides how openSUSE should look like and where is the discussion of this going on? jdd schrieb:

I think there is a misunderstanding of what is your home.

In fact there two very different parts.

* your own work, datas, documents. This should be on an other parttion. Many advantages, very easy backups, for examples.

* the config data of apps (all the "." files)

This last part can be very different from an install to an other.

This is a very important point. And it was a dark moment in Unix history, when somebody decided, that user configuration should go into dot-files in the user's home directory. I don't know, if openSUSE is the correct location to change this. Is there any discussion about this on FSH or LSB? To add some other points. A wise reason for using partitions is, if you can keep some of them read-only. IMHO, also configuration partitions should be read-only and only changed to rw during the moment of an admin writing changes to it. So /etc/mtab (mtab really should be in /var) is an obstacle of achieving this for /etc, there might be others. Another dumbness is the kde method of storing configuration data under /usr (or /opt, wherever kde is installed). The next topic in a partition discussion is backup strategy. For example /usr would be very nice to be kept read-only for security reasons, but from a backup point-of-view it's not interesting as everything there can be restored from your installation media. The only relevant data is your software choice, which you can then use again during installation time. AFAIK this important piece of information by default is never stored! And as a last resort, there is software not installed by the OS itself (e.g. all the small scripts you use for daily work, but also 3rd party software not supported by the OS). So with regard to these points in the future we should have a lot of partitions linked in place (or all software changed to this new FSH standard ;-) ), the problem is their size. Is there any file system which allows on-the-fly resizing (both increasing and shrinking)? This would be my favourite solution: to have different partitions, which can be resized on-demand to avoid the size troubles. I don't know of any, so maybe the SUSE people should use their contacts to the reiserfs people or the other kernel-filesystem-guys to support full ability to resize on-the-fly. As a short term solution maybe the upgrade way could have an option "delete everything but: [ ]/home, [ ]/etc, [ ]..." instead of "format /". Then the situation of not having separate /home is easier to handle, and it's up to the user who wants to keep his files to handle the possible changes of configuration methods. Offering an option "Backup: [ ]/home, [ ]/etc, [ ]..." would also be a possibility. In more general terms we should think about "pieces worth to be kept during upgrades" and if we want to keep them therefore on a separate partition or if we should backup them by default.

To access your data, last SuSE creates /dataX folders with others partition, so they are easily mounted. it's then enough to link your valuable data to any home folder.

I like this concept it should really be expanded with regard to my other points.

for now the only problem (minor) I have had is thunderbird don't accepting links, so I was obliged to copy the .thunderbird folder

But it allows to link the files inside the folders (I do this even for Win, Linux and FreeBSD linking to the same folder on a FAT32 partition). Ciao Siegbert

Sunday 28 Aug 2005 01:06 samaye Andreas Girardet alekhiit:

...

using a special partiton for home will immediatly get you in troubles if you use more than one Linux on the same computer (and with the same /home).

Since having muliple Linuxes is a special requirement only quite knowledeable people have,I would assume that such a person would be able to kilcik into the partitioner and choose his/her own partition too.

For what it's worth, I agree. I do have Fedora Core 4 installed beside my SuSE 9.3, only just in case there is a problem and I'm not able to boot into SuSE so how to access my files? I forgot that Linux is not like Windows and that it doesn't simply crash forbidding access to my data. I am looking forward to the day (to come soon) when I can wipe out FC4 and reclaim the space I allocated it. Sorry for rambling, but my point is that one really doesn't need to use two Linux distros for normal day-to-day productivity, and are you really suggest an ordinary user might need something other than SuSE?! Only some geeks might need that, as Andreas quoth, and they know to do things properly. (I actually have a separate /home for FC4 since FC4 doesn't use ReiserFS by default.) -- Shriramana Sharma Sym454 2005-08-35 http://samvit.org Penguin #395953 /

On Sat, Aug 27, 2005 at 04:26:51PM +0200, nordi wrote:

...

I do agree totally. The default are the ones the user sees. /home is crucial. The question here is: How big should the /home partition be? Sounds

Andreas Girardet wrote: trivial, but there is no 100% solution that will fit all the needs. For some users, a 10GB /home may be much too small. For me, 1GB would be absolutely enough, since I store the remaining gigabytes on my windows partition anyway, so I can also easily access my data with windows.

Whatever automatic setup you choose, there will always be some people complaining because it does not fit their needs! IMHO _not_ creating a special /home seems to be the best compromise that will create the least problems.

It creates the least problems on the initial instalation. It however creates more problems when people want to upgrade to a new version. Advanced users can easily do this by themselves and can change the settings as they like. I am thinking about people who have no clue and want to try out Linux. They try out SUSE 9.3 with a netinstall and like it so much they decide to buy 10.1. That means they are working already for one year with that system andnow they need to decide. Delete all their files and install a new version, risk loosing the data while resizing or just curse at Novell for not having tought about this. To compare: In the Windows world, this is done as well. There a partition will be called a drive, but most people I know will put their data on D:. The reason is that they still have their data when reinstalling. because you are experience, you already know that you need to put your data somewhere else (in your case the Windows partition). An unexpreinced user will have no clue. Even if the choice will not fit all, it will fit more people then now where with a new instalation data will be lost. (OK we know how to get past this, but not all people will know that. SOme just want to work on their PC) -- houghi http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

...

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On Sun, Aug 28, 2005 at 2:26 am, in message <4310782B.8010800@addcom.de>, nordi@addcom.de wrote: Andreas Girardet wrote: I do agree totally. The default are the ones the user sees. /home is crucial. The question here is: How big should the /home partition be? Sounds trivial, but there is no 100% solution that will fit all the needs. For some users, a 10GB /home may be much too small. For me, 1GB would be absolutely enough, since I store the remaining gigabytes on my windows partition anyway, so I can also easily access my data with windows.

Whatever automatic setup you choose, there will always be some people complaining because it does not fit their needs! IMHO _not_ creating a special /home seems to be the best compromise that will create the least problems.

So what exactly would the difference be to having / and /home on the same partition then? Most people who would complain are probably the ones who actually know what a partition is. Those people are the ones I assum can also cklick into the partitioner and set it up the way they wand (as I do). The normal user has no idea what a partition is and that is the one which has to be catered for with the normal default settings IMHO.

...

Also /boot should be reinstated since grub has been playing up on some systems of mine with the silly 1024 limit!

I agree on /boot, although for a different reason. A friend of mine had a Suse system. One time it crashed and after that not even grub would start! Turned out his file system for / had some corruptions cause by the crash that prevented grub from reading /boot/grub/menu.lst. As a result, he couldn't even start windows! With /boot on a seperate partition this could not happen, since /boot is hardly ever written to.

interesting ... certainly another reason for a seperate /boot/ Regards, Andreas openSUSE is SUPER: To help in the SUSE Performance Enhanced Release project visit http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/SUPER

Jonathan Lutz wrote:

Ok.. so for an "intermediate" user such as myself who does not want to lose data on upgrade, is it OK to put /home on a seperate partition? Only other OS is Windows, on a seperate HDD.. :)

yes. you only must have to be very conservative when doing your next system update. with recent hudge drives, it's simple to use 10Gb partitions (ans let the rest unpartitionned if you have no use of it now). so then, never maque an update. Do a fresh install on a new partition (and new /home), then link or copy from the old ones. this is quite safe. don't forget one don't update Linux very frequently (I used to keep linux 2 or three years on production machines), so when you do it, the differences are great. buit, of course, at that time you may have also a new terabytes disk :-) jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

Related question.. what is a good size for "home" partition vs. "system" partition, say, on an 80gb drive? JON On 8/27/05, Marco Maske wrote:

houghi wrote:

...

Is there a reason that /home is not on its own partition anymore by default?

Yes, you can do that easy with Yast. Better is to take /home on it's own Harddisc.

Here is an oversight of good splitting points:

Mount Points: http://www.nyx.net/~sgjoen/disk-9.html

-- Ciao Marco, registered GNU/Linux-User 313353

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I also suggest to add small hint like "Installing /home on separate partition is recommended because it will be easier to update your whole SUSE Linux in the future and ... and ... etc." -- SU --------------------------------------------------------------------- Najwiekszy MOTO-serwis w Polsce >>> http://link.interia.pl/f18af

--- houghi wrote:

On Sat, Aug 27, 2005 at 12:51:32PM -0400, Jonathan Lutz wrote:

...

Related question.. what is a good size for

"home" partition vs.

...

"system" partition, say, on an 80gb drive? JON

I would answer it in another way. How much do you NOT want on /home

I would say 20GB on / and all the rest on ~/home, no matter what the real size is. With you it is 60GB, for me it would be 130GB. -- houghi

http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/Making_a_DVD_from_CDs

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thats of course something I haven't thought of ... yeah maybe that coz the / - size shouldn't increase too much. :-) ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

Rasmus Plewe wrote:

On Sun, Aug 28, 2005 at 02:14:14PM +0200, houghi wrote:

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I would say 20GB on / and all the rest on ~/home, no matter what the real size is. With you it is 60GB, for me it would be 130GB.

Nice algorithm. Especially for a 20 GB Laptop, where 5 GB are reserved for other OS's.

I have a 20Gb laptop, 3Gb for win millenium, 5 for data, 2x5 for two linux. (the rest for /boot and /swap) jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

Marcus Cooper wrote:

On 28/08/05, jdd wrote:

...

I have a 20Gb laptop, 3Gb for win millenium, 5 for data, 2x5 for two linux. (the rest for /boot and /swap)

jdd

Jdd

You're very brave running millenium ;)

installed from beginning with specialized drivers and kept for that reason. never used though :-) jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

On Sun, Aug 28, 2005 at 07:31:41PM +0100, Marcus Cooper wrote:

On 28/08/05, jdd wrote:

...

I have a 20Gb laptop, 3Gb for win millenium, 5 for data, 2x5 for two linux. (the rest for /boot and /swap)

jdd

Jdd

You're very brave running millenium ;)

Could be drunk ;)

-- Photos : www.flickr.com/photos/marcusc Blog : marcusbrain.blogspot.com

`The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.' HST

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...

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On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 5:06 pm, in message <20050829050649.GB28412@penne>, houghi@houghi.org wrote: On Sun, Aug 28, 2005 at 07:59:30PM +0200, Rasmus Plewe wrote: On Sun, Aug 28, 2005 at 02:14:14PM +0200, houghi wrote:

I would say 20GB on / and all the rest on ~/home, no matter what the real size is. With you it is 60GB, for me it would be 130GB.

Nice algorithm. Especially for a 20 GB Laptop, where 5 GB are reserved for other OS's.

There will be indeed situation where a seperate /home will not be practical. This does not mean you should take away the good practice for those situations where it IS good common practice.

I also could see a situation where you can select if you want a seperate /home or not (with yes being the default) and a slidebar with a real number selector next to it to say how large you want it to have.

The algoruthm could be something else. What is your proposal for a algoritm? 2/3rd of the available space with a minimal of X GB and maximal Y GB for /home and minimal X GB for /home.

Again, I understand that the situation will not be ideal for everyone. It will be (in my opinion) still be better then what we have now.

Well In general a user that is more advanced will choose to create a custom partition setup anyhow. For special scenarios a few clicks can help the advanced admin. The normal user would appreciate our help here. I added this simple logic to control.xml. But at the moment it seems to ignore it and still automatically suggest the swap + / scheme. I used the docs from http://www.novell.com/documentation/nld/index.html?page=/documentation/nld/n... Maybe someone on here has a clue why that is and can suggest what I should do? My current control.xml is on ftp://opensuse.linux.co.nz/pub/SUPER/files/control.xml <partitioning> <partitions config:type="list"> <partition> <disk config:type="integer">0</disk> <fstopt>defaults</fstopt> <fsys>reiser</fsys> <increasable config:type="boolean">false</increasable> <mount>/boot</mount> <pct config:type="integer">100</pct> <size>200mb</size> </partition> <partition> <disk config:type="integer">2</disk> <mount>swap</mount> <size>auto</size> </partition> <partition> <disk config:type="integer">1</disk> <fstopt>defaults</fstopt> <fsys>reiser</fsys> <increasable config:type="boolean">true</increasable> <mount>/</mount> <size>2gb</size> </partition> </partitions> Regards, Andreas openSUSE is SUPER: To help in the SUSE Performance Enhanced Release project visit http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/SUPER