Haro de Grauw said the following on 10/30/2011 05:17 AM:

...

...

Further the option of LVM based, what does it do? I request if someone could really explain / elaborate/ link me to this (for explanation).

You are not likely to need this unless you are using some advanced set-up with multiple hard discs. Wikipedia has some decent enough articles on LVM; it means "logical volume management", and the basic idea is that you create "virtual" discs which can span across multiple hard discs. For example, you can combine two 1TB physical discs to create a 2TB "virtual disc". Or, you can create one 1TB "virtual disc" that is copied on two physical 1TB discs, so that if one disc is damaged you don't lose data (this is similar to software RAID, but LVM allows more flexibility, e.g., combining discs of different sizes).

I use LVM on disks as small as 80G. LVM mean s you don't have to make decisions about partitioning when you install. You can be minimalist and adjust the size of the partitions later. This might include spreading a partition across more than one disk at a later date. LVM also offers things like snapshot backups and striping and easy ways of doing some RAID-like things. Forget "virtual". Any FS is just a way to map the management of files onto disk sectors. LVM gives you greater flexibility. Tyro asked if he should accept the 'suggested' partitioning offered by the installer. If he does then he's stuck with it. If he finds he's devoted too much to "/" and "/tmp" and not enough to "/home" and "/usr" then he's stuck. I've installed 11.4 (which was an upgrade from 9.something onwards) on a 80G drive on an older laptop This is dual boot with Windows, so not all the drive is LVM. On the Linux side there is a '/boot' and '/' partition. # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on rootfs 1035692 549356 433724 56% / /dev/sda1 171101 77334 84933 48% /boot # pvscan PV /dev/sda5 VG vgmain lvm2 [52.73 GiB / 15.27 GiB free] # lvscan ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/usr' [5.91 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/var' [3.91 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/home' [3.43 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/TMP' [1.48 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/usrshare' [4.00 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/usrsrc' [484.00 MiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/Downloads' [4.01 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/libruby' [3.00 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/Thunderbird' [1.68 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/Documents' [600.00 MiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/PDF' [3.00 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/Ruby' [1.00 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/Media' [4.00 GiB] inherit ACTIVE '/dev/vgmain/swap' [1.00 GiB] inherit It helps to have LVs and hence FSs under 5G so you can back them up onto a DVD :-) This machine is used for Ruby development. It is a 33-bt Intel with 1G of memory. Of the LVM-based File systems, only /usr/share is above 50% capacity. That's because I've added many 3rd party 'libraries' for icons and the like. So 1. No, LVM is not for 'large disks' 2. Yes, LVM lets you defer decisions about space allocation 3. Yes, LVM lets you allocate and reallocate disk space to match your ACTUAL use as your needs change 4. LVM lets you do striping, mirroring and snapshot backups. 5. LVM lets you use drives of different sizes and technologies to do the above. Finally, I've seen no performance hit with LVM. The extra level of indirection is accommodated in memory, and the issues with file system efficiency and drive latency are more significant. They are best addressed by having more memory. On another machine I'm running 11.4 on a 50G drive (YES!) where almost everything is NFS mounted (look up PXE) but has 4G of memory. Its a LOT faster and more responsive than the machine with less memory but more real local disk. As far as I'm concerned, LVM is a necessity since I don't know what the disk-space need will be in the future. -- Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. --Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. said the following on 10/30/2011 10:13 AM:

On Sunday, 2011-10-30 at 09:32 -0400, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

So

...

1. No, LVM is not for 'large disks' 2. Yes, LVM lets you defer decisions about space allocation 3. Yes, LVM lets you allocate and reallocate disk space to match your ACTUAL use as your needs change 4. LVM lets you do striping, mirroring and snapshot backups. 5. LVM lets you use drives of different sizes and technologies to do the above.

Recovery is more difficult.

Recovery of what? Since from my POV LVM makes backups _MUCH_ easier, and I do backups a LOT more than I do recoveries, the sum total is easier. If you mean restoring the LVM configuration, then perhaps, but that too can be backed up. In everything in life there are +'s and -'s For me, using LVM the +'s so massively out weigh the -'s there is no contest. -- Flying is not dangerous; crashing is dangerous. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. said the following on 10/30/2011 10:55 AM:

On Sunday, 2011-10-30 at 10:28 -0400, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

Carlos E. R. said the following on 10/30/2011 10:13 AM:

...

...

Recovery is more difficult.

...

Recovery of what?

Any type of problem when booting involving LVM.

I have to grant you that, so long as Suse stays with Grub1, this will be a problem. I have other machines running Fedora and Grub2 and its more capable. But the solution is to have a separate /boot partition, which I'd recommend even if you are using LVM and Grub2. Manageability again. The price you pay is that it needs to be a large partition (say 200M) because it is inflexible (not being on LVM) and if you are mirroring that can add complications as well. That being said, the 'disasters' I've had that involve booting have had nothing to do with LVM. With 10.x and 11.3 the installation disk had recovery tools. They they were absent from the 11.4 disk was more a problem than anything to do with LVM. As it has turned out over then years I've been using LVM, the fact I've been using LVM has been a life-saver many times. It turns out to be incredibly robust.

...

If you mean restoring the LVM configuration, then perhaps, but that too can be backed up.

Yes, it can, but that is extreme, if for any LVM problem I have to dump an image.

Yes, but I've never needed to. A scan of the drive has always been enough to rebuild the information. I've never _needed_ restore from the back up of /etc/lvm

...

In everything in life there are +'s and -'s For me, using LVM the +'s so massively out weigh the -'s there is no contest.

Yes, but that is because you know how to manage it and solve its problems. Most of us do not.

Once upon a time I did not. This goes for everything in life; be it driving the car or typing on the keyboard :-) To know you have to learn, and that means making the commitment. The sooner in life you do, the sooner you surmount that hurdle and the better equipped you are for the next. No doubt, Carlos, you know a lot more than me about running RAID ...

I have seen posts of people with machines not booting, having an LVM related problem, and nobody coming for help. That is what scares me. I can solve many disk and filesystem problems on my own, but not if LVM is involved.

Some of it is 'tools'; some of it is preparation. (Like making a recovery disk.) Isn't everything in life like that? To be honest, the 'not booting' problems I've faced have had to do with hardware; disk failures, bad caps; power surges. The most annoying one was the absence of tools on the 11.4 installation disk. -- Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. Thomas A. Edison -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 7:35 PM, Linux Tyro wrote:

Thanks a lot, but I have started the torrent download of 64 bit version of openSUSE 11.4 DVD.

Correction: No it is 32 bit only. -- Thx. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday, 2011-10-30 at 10:51 -0400, Anton Aylward wrote:

In fact you probably want "/usr" (and "/usr/share") on separate partitions and "/tmp" on a separate partition for security reasons. (q.v. - go google)

I heard that the new systemd is not compatible with a separate /usr. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from 11.4 x86_64 "Celadon" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.16 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAk6tZmYACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XXLQCff1bA1gmiKXI2s5LjM2x5k+4X UOQAnRl7YpgCO0jbZVoZghqNYNfZd4Y0 =7lmm -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Sunday, October 30, 2011 09:59:50 AM Carlos E. R. wrote:

On Sunday, 2011-10-30 at 10:51 -0400, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

In fact you probably want "/usr" (and "/usr/share") on separate partitions and "/tmp" on a separate partition for security reasons. (q.v. - go google)

I heard that the new systemd is not compatible with a separate /usr.

Nor it is sysvinit, when you have in /usr/lib/udisks what you need to mount everything including /usr :) -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 8:21 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

Linux Tyro said the following on 10/30/2011 10:05 AM:

...

...

by default openSUSE does this:

...

one SWAP partition one root partition "/" one home partition "/home/"

The two partitions '/' and '/home' are separate?

Of course. They have different dynamics.

In fact you probably want "/usr" (and "/usr/share") on separate partitions and "/tmp" on a separate partition for security reasons. (q.v. - go google)

In an ideal world (a Kiosk perhaps) /usr and /usr/share and /etc (and /bin and /sbin and /usr/bin and /usr/sbin and /lib and /usr/lib) would all be "read only".

OUCH!  A few things in /etc are dynamic.  Lets symlink them :-) Oh, and lets make /usr/tmp symlinked to /tmp while about it :-)

I did say "ideal world".

The point I'm trying to make is that there are different dynamics. You shouldn't have ordinary users altering things except under /home. There's a reason its called that.

Similarly with "/tmp" and "/var"

Think about it ....

...

So when PC is off, SWAP is empty?

Sounds like Zen to me ...

...

...

If your Ubuntu install also had separate root ("/") and home ("/home/") partitions, you might want to keep the "/home" one, as this will contain your documents, saved settings etc. Or perhaps you want to wipe out everything and start from scratch: in this case, you would format (i.e., wipe) both the root and the home partition. (Also, note that the home partition is optional: if you don't make this, then "home" will simply be a subdirectory of root.)

I have already taken back-up of all the documents in the Current Ubuntu LTS. I just want complete replacement of it with openSUSE 11.4, but it should take only this Ubuntu space and Windows XP should remain intact (my sis uses that). I don't know if Ubuntu currently is having separate root ("/") and home ("/home"), but please tell me the command to check this and I would post (I just installed Ubuntu and it automatically took all the options keeping aside Windows XP safe).

Also should I make separate root ("/") and home ("/home/") or not, would it be beneficial in any way(s)?

Manageability. You should never need to expand the space used by a root partition (unless you are installing more stuff).  If you have a separate /usr (and /usr/share and /tmp and /var) you can lock down your root partition and make it fairly small.

In the days before LVM I ended up doing an install many times over to figure out this size.

I really love LVM!

...

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 7:02 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

I use LVM on disks as small as 80G.

...

LVM mean s you don't have to make decisions about partitioning when you install.  You can be minimalist and adjust the size of the partitions later.

...

This might include spreading a partition across more than one disk at a later date. ..... ..... <snip>

I guess (after reading your explanation) that I would really be stuck with LVM, it is typical thing, at least for a beginner and for a home user (according to me only).

If you mean "stuck" as in "by choosing a path you exclude all others", then yes; but that applies even more so if you chose had partitions rather than LVM.

...

Even I am in doubt with the following:

Should I allocate the separate memories to each of /tmp, /var, /home, /, and what is the purpose of doing it separately rather than what the installer does it by default. Would it be beneficial? However, I am currently just replacing my Ubuntu LTS with openSUSE and remaining windows xp intact.

Yes, its beneficial in that you don't need to allocate ALL the space in the LVM.  You are deferring the decision and you can revisit it later, shrink one file system and the partition it is on and expand another when, at a later date, you find the original decisions abut allocation were not suitable for the use to which you end up using the machine.

Yes, you should allocate separate "virtual partitions" - Logical Volume in LVM terminology.  It makes things more manageable.  For a beginner, you don't want to get locked into a allocation and find its not right, have to wipe everything and re-install.

The four file systems you mention have radically different dynamics and use.  I'd recommend moving not only /tmp from / but move /usr as well.

There is a reason /usr/share is so named.  On my home LAN it exists on one machine only, with a few symlinks to accommodate local machine needs. NFS is wonderful!

...

People here are highly skilled (I know and have heard, even in Ubuntu forums), so please explain this a little bit, I got idea when Grauw and Aylward explained me, thx. But LVM is really typical!

I am sorry but as a beginner, I really didn't understand all this stuff you said! Could you use a simpler language for me, like the Haro de Grauw used and I got all things he wrote! -- Thx. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 8:24 PM, Felix Miata wrote:

...

So when PC is off, SWAP is empty?

Sort of, unless "off" means suspended. If suspended, it gets reloaded into RAM at startup. If not, whatever was there at last shutdown is treated as free and available even though technically not empty.

...

Also should I make separate root ("/") and home ("/home/") or not, would it be beneficial in any way(s)?

Usually it makes good sense to create separate / and /home partitions. It facilitates OS upgrading by not requiring that you backup your data first and also need to restore it afterward.

...

Should I allocate the separate memories to each of /tmp, /var, /home, /, and what is the purpose of doing it separately rather than what the installer does it by default. Would it be beneficial? However, I am currently just replacing my Ubuntu LTS with openSUSE and remaining windows xp intact.

Such an inexperienced user as you would do well to avoid micromanaging partitions. The most such a person should consider would be separate /, /home, swap & /boot, and probably not /boot either.

Except -> if you wish to plan ahead for upgrading or experimentation. It makes sense to reserve an extra same size partition for / (or two or three) to be used for upgrading to a newer release or for experimenting with a different distro entirely, or for testing a development release. Having extra partition for / for this purpose enables upgrading or testing without materially disturbing your existing installation. I use the word "materially" because certain user settings can be changed by a newer or alien release, and such changes can disrupt reversion to your original OS version. Such disruptions can be avoided by using a different user login (not sharing data directly) until permanent upgrade or switch is desired, or doing all testing using only a root login.

Before deciding on partitioning, with or without use of LVM, and before beginning installation of whatever you download, I suggest some further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_volume_management http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Partitioning

Thanks for all this, this would really take much time to read at first. I would try to read it and get something to know about the partitioning. -- Thx. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 10:51 PM, James Knott wrote:

The installation will suggest a partition layout.  It will generally be a good choice and is certainly the easiest way to go.

I am only worried for ... how would I recognize that it is the Ubuntu one and I have to only format this one. separate for root (/) and home (/home), is good (as you all say), but separate for each like /boot, /tmp, /usr, ... should be done like this...? I am really messed up with all this -- I consider Linux to be very best, but installing first time and with experience it highly troublesome... Still I try. Okay, installer is smart enough to know all this things, and I would go with the default options only, but I was trying to know somehow what exactly was the purpose of having separate partitions and how does it help.... -- Thx. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. said the following on 10/30/2011 08:10 PM:

On Monday, 2011-10-31 at 05:05 +0530, Linux Tyro wrote:

...

separate for root (/) and home (/home), is good (as you all say), but separate for each like /boot, /tmp, /usr, ... should be done like this...?

Just separate root, home, and swap. Don't overcomplicate yourself.

Having a /tmp isn't complicating things and if you have runaways you don't want them consuming all of the partition the system is on.

...

Okay, installer is smart enough to know all this things, and I would go with the default options only,

The installer does not always generate the best proposal for your needs. You have to use your judgement.

Too right! It might make since for a very small drive, less than 50G say, but if you accept it allocating all of the space available on your 250G then you will end up frustrated and redo the installation in a few days or weeks, and may even end up blaming your frustration on Linux. I've seen people do that.

...

but I was trying to know somehow what exactly was the purpose of having separate partitions and how does it help....

You need those three. Read the opensuse book for more info.

Yes, you NEED those three or you will be in a complete mess. Having separate /boot and /tmp is good insurance against a variety of problems. The effort it takes to set those up is minimal and the value if (and when, you are after all a newbie) things go wrong is well worth the investment. $ mount | grep TMP /dev/mapper/vgmain-TMP on /tmp type ext3 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,noatime,nodiratime,errors=continue,commit=60,barrier=1,data=writeback) ^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ Note these security features! Yes, I have "data=writeback" This is /tmp; its get cleaned out on every reboot! -- We'll give you your money back if not satisfied, but we do suspect that we will be quite satisfied with your money. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. said the following on 10/30/2011 10:08 PM:

On Sunday, 2011-10-30 at 21:22 -0400, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

...

Just separate root, home, and swap. Don't overcomplicate yourself.

...

Having a /tmp isn't complicating things and if you have runaways you don't want them consuming all of the partition the system is on.

It is for a beginner.

He can reinstall when he learns enough and can decide for himself what he wants.

Tyro says he's excited by such matters as 'a secure environment'. That means security matters such as not letting runaways lock up the machine and consume all the disk space. As I keep saying, the effort and complication required to add another partition and file system at installation time is trivial and the benefits are non trivial. Saying its too complicated for a beginner when he already has to go though the step and repeat of verifying the "suggested" partitions is an insult to his intelligence and denying him an opportunity to learn. "Beginner" does not mean "Stupid" or incapable or learning. He has to "take the training wheels off" sometime. This isn't throwing him in the deep end; we've given him a great deal of material and references and encouraged experimentation. We should be positive about him progressing. Adding /tmp at installation is a small step. -- Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits. Thomas A. Edison -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 5:31 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

Tyro says he's excited by such matters as 'a secure environment'.

What I meant by 'a secure environment' is that using Windows was not that secured and that now I realize, even without learning Linux! I feel exciting, that how secured would I be feeling at the time when I would have learned the Linux, a great discover!

As I keep saying, the effort and complication required to add another partition and file system at installation time is trivial and the benefits are non trivial.

Correct, I just go with a suggested reading before doing anything like that.

"Beginner" does not mean "Stupid" or incapable or learning. He has to "take the training wheels off" sometime.

I do agree with you.

This isn't throwing him in the deep end; we've given him a great deal of material and references and encouraged experimentation.  We should be positive about him progressing.

Adding /tmp at installation is a small step.

I definitely try that. On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:19 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

I'm glad you're excited; you're following a great tradition. Some of here pre-date Windows and can only attribute its popularity to (a) massive marketing and (b) pandering to the lowest common denominator, those unwilling to learn or experiment.

Yes, and it was the majority of people (earlier)!

Linux can be secured,

I guess you should have used 'is' in place of 'can be'.

in fact the threshold for securing it is much lower than for Windows and much easier than, for the results, than many BigSystems - but that's way off topic for this list.

Agreeing.

In an earlier posting I gave the example of how I secure /tmp by mounting it so that various malware won't work. I mount /tmp with the "noexec" and "nosetuid" flags. So if I get sent a PDF which, when I open it, tries creating an executable, it won't be able to execute. Its a simple setting but the benefit is great. http://www.md3v.com/mount-the-tmp-partition-with-noexec-and-nosuid-options

Really nice to know this. Someone truly told, 'After learning Linux (even a bit), we can know how Windows used to tie the hands'.

Of course no-one claims any single security feature is an absolute, and there may be cases where a specific security feature impedes a specific business need, just as there are fringe cases where a car seat belt is a hindrance rather than a safety feature; but these are fringe situations, not the common-place.

May be this is used for formalities type of processing or a agreement in join-venture type of thing, like the one between Novel and MS (not sure if it is relevant here or not)!

A 'scratch' system from the Salvation Army thrift store, Goodwill or whatever your local thrift store label is (?Oxfam?) may be $10-$25. OK, so its not going to be a bleeding edge system. On the way to work last month I saw my neighbour throwing out a 64-bit system because he was upgrading to a quad-core system. Lots of people do that!

Oh.

Keep your eyes open. This isn't a production system we're talking about, just a scratch system to experiment with.

Yes, I agree with your suggestions.

My local computer stores are selling 500GB drives for about $30, 4G of DDR3 for about $20. (You can find DDR2 for about the same price on eBay).

What this boils down to is that for less than the price of tank of gas for your car you can have a reasonable "scratch" system to experiment with.

And that really gives you a great experiment and learning in fact.

If you don't drive, translate that cost into something else such as evening out at the movies with pop and popcorn.

Even after buying PC, I would continue watching movies, after all entertainment too is a part of life, at least for me!

Economics is about cost and benefit. I keep harping back to this. What return - benefit - are you getting for the expenditure of effort?

I continue to point out that the effort required to experiment with adding partitions, not least under a LVM, is very low, and the benefit of having the additional partitions, both tangible and as a learning experience (such as the opportunity to experiment with, for example, growing and shrinking file systems, creating different file systems in the LVM and seeing how the same sets of files consume space and respond, is now quite easy to do.

The results are great, of course, learning Linux would be great, even though I can be from a different field.

You may be a "Tyro", but I was one once and continue to be with the new technologies that come out. Right now I'm learning about SystemD and execdomains and Csets and Cgroups.

http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/linux_for_beginners_index.html

Don't let the people here who say "he's only a beginner" discourage you from learning and experimenting. If you never venture out you will never experience they joy and wonderment of learning.

I am agreeing but consider a fact that you are from Software field and you work entire day there (I guess, this is the case) but it is not for everyone, like me, who is/are not from the software field but giving computers and especially a trial - in their own free time only, by sparing from their busy schedule -- and if I were from the same field, like, Software Development, there could have been no problem or time issues experimenting all the day with those hard disks and partitions. Still I am loving Linux a lot -- that's why started the torrent download of openSUSE 11.4 dvd (64 bit) --- yes it would take much time (bandwidth issues here) -- but it would be a fun installing openSUSE -- using GUI installer (the default one). On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:33 PM, zGreenfelder wrote:

as a suggestion for the OP

You are welcome

(and maybe he's stopped reading by now);

Not stopped but I read when I am free

given his constraints (can't nuke the machine, can't afford to have it down for all day, worried about losing partitioning, wants to learn, etc, etc),

Can afford but the problem is 'TIME', so have to use one machine right now.

I think it might be a good idea to go with virtualbox* [http://www.virtualbox.org - from Sun (now Oracle) it's free for

<snip>

* - yes, there are other virtual machine implementations that could be used instead of virtualbox, it's just a suggestion.

Your suggestion is valuable, but as if now, I have started the said download (openSUSE 11.4 DVD torrent), so better (I feel, right now) that I should just use the GUI installer, it (openSUSE) would work out of the box (I read in review) and then after seeing it, next time, that too after reading all about virtuality (or when the proper time comes), I would go for it. However and in fact DEFINITELY I would go for its trial, it is a good option (as you say and you have experienced).

I don't know how the license works for the free (is there even a free version anymore?), xen, and probably others.

You have used the paid version (only)? -- THX -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

James Knott said the following on 10/30/2011 09:09 PM:

Linux Tyro wrote:

...

Okay, installer is smart enough to know all this things, and I would go with the default options only, but I was trying to know somehow what exactly was the purpose of having separate partitions and how does it help....

If you want to learn, the best thing to do is get another computer that you can experiment with, without worrying about breaking something. If something doesn't work out, chalk it up as a "learning experience" and try again.

+1, not make that +10 -- "The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." -- George Bernard Shaw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Linux Tyro said the following on 10/30/2011 10:28 PM:

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:39 AM, James Knott wrote:

...

If you want to learn, the best thing to do is get another computer that you can experiment with, without worrying about breaking something. If something doesn't work out, chalk it up as a "learning experience" and try again.

Sorry but I cannot do that, I have only one PC - dual booted with Windows XP and Linux. My sis uses Windows XP and I try to use Linux --> in my free time, where I work, I have no relation with Linux or computers, in fact, I liked Linux and that's why try to see it, sit in front of a Linux machine (even for as low as 2 mins!), just because I am excited to see such a secured environment and the development. I wonder why Windows people used and Linux was so uncommon that majority of the world population followed Windows during the past eras, amazing!!

I'm glad you're excited; you're following a great tradition. Some of here pre-date Windows and can only attribute its popularity to (a) massive marketing and (b) pandering to the lowest common denominator, those unwilling to learn or experiment. Linux can be secured, in fact the threshold for securing it is much lower than for Windows and much easier than, for the results, than many BigSystems - but that's way off topic for this list. The operative word there is "CAN". In an earlier posting I gave the example of how I secure /tmp by mounting it so that various malware won't work. I mount /tmp with the "noexec" and "nosetuid" flags. So if I get sent a PDF which, when I open it, tries creating an executable, it won't be able to execute. Its a simple setting but the benefit is great. http://www.md3v.com/mount-the-tmp-partition-with-noexec-and-nosuid-options Of course no-one claims any single security feature is an absolute, and there may be cases where a specific security feature impedes a specific business need, just as there are fringe cases where a car seat belt is a hindrance rather than a safety feature; but these are fringe situations, not the common-place.

But for "learning experience", I would be happy to do experiments with my current system only -->> after taking back-up and on holiday.

I look at it from the POV of economics. A 'scratch' system from the Salvation Army thrift store, Goodwill or whatever your local thrift store label is (?Oxfam?) may be $10-$25. OK, so its not going to be a bleeding edge system. On the way to work last month I saw my neighbour throwing out a 64-bit system because he was upgrading to a quad-core system. Lots of people do that! Keep your eyes open. This isn't a production system we're talking about, just a scratch system to experiment with. My local computer stores are selling 500GB drives for about $30, 4G of DDR3 for about $20. (You can find DDR2 for about the same price on eBay). What this boils down to is that for less than the price of tank of gas for your car you can have a reasonable "scratch" system to experiment with. If you don't drive, translate that cost into something else such as evening out at the movies with pop and popcorn. Economics is about cost and benefit. I keep harping back to this. What return - benefit - are you getting for the expenditure of effort? I continue to point out that the effort required to experiment with adding partitions, not least under a LVM, is very low, and the benefit of having the additional partitions, both tangible and as a learning experience (such as the opportunity to experiment with, for example, growing and shrinking file systems, creating different file systems in the LVM and seeing how the same sets of files consume space and respond, is now quite easy to do. You may be a "Tyro", but I was one once and continue to be with the new technologies that come out. Right now I'm learning about SystemD and execdomains and Csets and Cgroups. http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/linux_for_beginners_index.html Don't let the people here who say "he's only a beginner" discourage you from learning and experimenting. If you never venture out you will never experience they joy and wonderment of learning. -- People who are willing to rely on the government to keep them safe are pretty much standing on Darwin's mat, pounding on the door, screaming, "Take me, take me!" -- Carl Jacobs -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Linux Tyro said the following on 10/30/2011 07:35 PM:

separate for root (/) and home (/home), is good (as you all say), but separate for each like /boot, /tmp, /usr, ... should be done like this...? I am really messed up with all this -- I consider Linux to be very best, but installing first time and with experience it highly troublesome...

You are making this into a big issue. Do the install. Wipe it; do it again with different partitions. Do that four times a day for a week. Now do it for a week with with LVM. How else do you expect to learn if not by gaining experience. Practice; try variation and compare the results; practice; experiment.

Still I try.

Okay, installer is smart enough to know all this things, and I would go with the default options only, but I was trying to know somehow what exactly was the purpose of having separate partitions and how does it help....

The installer is dumb! All it guarantees is that you will have enough space for a basic (minimal) install. It can't read your mind, doesn't care about future use or objectives. http://bid.ankara.edu.tr/yardim/linux.install.guide/node68.html <quote> Why use more than one filesystem? The most commonly stated reason is safety; if, for some reason, one of your filesystems is damaged, the others will (usually) be unharmed. On the other hand, if you store all of your files on the root filesystem, and for some reason the filesystem is damaged, then you may lose all of your files in one fell swoop. This is, however, rather uncommon; if you backup the system regularly you should be quite safe. </quote> http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/685/why-put-things-other-than-home-t... <quote> Because ordinary users can cause things to be written to /var and /tmp, and thus potentially cause problems for the whole system. This way user processes can fill up /var and /tmp, but not the root fs. </quote> <quote> A folder I sometimes put on a separate partition is /usr/local/ so that any software I've built and installed separately from my distro's package manager could possibly be re-used if I change/upgrade my distro or by another distro installed along side it. It's obviously not guaranteed to work across all possible combinations but it does no harm. </quote> http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/the-importance-of-linux-partitions.html -- You have to learn to treat people as a resource......you have to ask not what do they cost, but what is the yield, what can they produce? --Peter F. Drucker -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 9:06 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

The main reason I'd have for disagreeing is something Tyro hasn't told us (Or that I didn't note): the size of his disk.

Its 250 GB. -- Thx. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

James Knott said the following on 10/30/2011 12:46 PM:

Linux Tyro wrote:

...

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 9:06 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

The main reason I'd have for disagreeing is something Tyro hasn't told us (Or that I didn't note): the size of his disk.

Its 250 GB.

You might be able to squeeze it in. ;-)

My E520 has a 320 GB drive, of which about 195 GB is used for the Linux installation. The partition set up by the installation was automagically set to 20 GB and /home is 173 GB.

My headless server, and old, old Dell with just 512M of memory, has a 250G drive and uses LVM. No Windows though. # fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x62756647 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 90 722893+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 91 220 1044225 82 Linux swap /dev/sda3 221 30401 242428882+ 8e Linux LVM # pvscan PV /dev/sda3 VG vgmain lvm2 [231.20 GB / 141.08 GB free] Total: 1 [231.20 GB] / in use: 1 [231.20 GB] / in no VG: 0 [0 ] That's 141G free within the LVM. On a file server. That is the DHCP server, the LDAP server, the DNS server, the HTTP server for the LAN. An old Dell machine at 1GHz. It never breaks into a sweat. If it ever fails I have an old 486 laptop that I could run a LiveCD on and jury-rig that same drive ... I don't expect that to be a strain either ... :-) 250G is lots of space to play with. You could four separate distributions in there, each with separate /, /tmp, /home, /usr -- Perhaps I am a dinosaur, but if I saw the word "hacker" used positively on a resume, I would have trouble continuing. Hacking means using "quick and dirty" means to achieve an objective without concern for "collateral damage" and is totally opposite to my philosophy of "first, do no harm". -- Pagett Peterson, Wednesday, January 18, 2006 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Linux Tyro said the following on 10/30/2011 12:26 PM:

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 9:06 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

The main reason I'd have for disagreeing is something Tyro hasn't told us (Or that I didn't note): the size of his disk.

Its 250 GB.

You can probably shrink you Windows partition down to less than 50G. Put 200M aside for /boot Put 1G aside for / Put the rest in LVM. I have this on a 80G drive. As you can see, 11.4 fits in easily and its nowhere near half of that 80G Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/vgmain-TMP 1.5G 35M 1.4G 3% /tmp /dev/mapper/vgmain-usr 6.0G 3.2G 2.9G 53% /usr /dev/mapper/vgmain-usrshare 4.0G 2.6G 1.5G 63% /usr/share /dev/mapper/vgmain-usrsrc 484M 68M 417M 14% /usr/src /dev/mapper/vgmain-var 4.0G 1.9G 2.1G 48% /var /dev/mapper/vgmain-home 3.5G 1.7G 1.9G 47% /home What's that? less than 20G ? Perhaps I have an old 30G IDE I could put 11.4 on as "throw-away"! You could easily create a couple of spare "/" file systems for different distributions, a larger /boot .... LVM gives you a lot of flexibility to manage -- Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself. Chinese Proverb -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Linux Tyro said the following on 10/30/2011 01:17 PM:

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 10:29 PM, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

You can probably shrink you Windows partition down to less than 50G.

How would I do that?

I'm surprised you ask. You must already have done that to shrink it in order to have fitted Ubuntu. -- We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -- T.S. Eliot -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Linux Tyro wrote:

...

You can probably shrink you Windows partition down to less than 50G.

How would I do that?

There may be a utility in Windows that would likely be your best choice. Failing that, the install partioner will do the trick. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2011/10/30 11:36 (GMT-0400) Anton Aylward composed:

In my opinion, having a separate /boot is VERY important no matter what you are doing.

The problem is actually convincing ordinary people about it, since Linux installers of recent years seem universally to think it unnecessary, and installation instructions tend to give it short shrift at best. All my systems have at least one "boot" partition. However, that is _MY_ startup partition, which I don't permit OS installers mess with. As such, it's a home for Grub (which I install manually from a Knoppix boot), and where boot starts, but never mounted on /boot. On single HD systems it gets mounted as /disks/boot, on multis they get mounted as /disks/sda/boot, /disks/sdb/boot, ... /disks/sdX/boot. This way boot is never impossible unless I screw up and let something overwrite my generic PC MBR code. Even then, it's something easily fixed via DOS floppy boot and FDISK /MBR or equivalent. Mine don't need to be very large per se, because they don't need to house OS kernels and initrds, but without enough size, the space available for installation kernels and initrds can quickly disappear. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org