Felix Miata wrote:

On 2014-06-20 12:42 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

...

I let the 13.1 installer set up the partitions that it wants. It set up a 1 G swap, a 20G /root partition (with all of the potentially big files like /bin, /opt, and so on) and a 400G /home partition with just my own user directory.

...

This seems totally screwy. Why not a 1G swap, a 1G /boot partition with GRUB, the kernel image, the map, etc and the rest for /root?

...

What should it be?

Logically carving up your storage device(s) is as much art as science. It should be whatever works best for you. Many favor use of LVM in order that changes are easier after installation and use, among other reasons. I don't, use LVM, because it doesn't fit my backup/restore/clone strategies.

I have never let an installer decide how my storage should be partitioned. I have virtually all my systems in multiboot configuration. I have a startup primary partition with Grub that I maintain without the help of any distro scripts. Each distro thus needs no separate /boot. Each uses the same swap. Each use the same separate /home partition except when trouble shooting issues related to having a separate /home in th first place. I also have separate partitions on most systems for /srv, /usr/local, /pub and /isos (a short name for both isos and other large files, such as videos and music).

The / partitions on my installations are smallish by most people's standards. The smallest size I commonly use is 4.4G, but the most common here are 4.8G. My largest is 10.4G. I have several that are 5.6G, some 7.2G, a few 8G and 9.6G. All used here as / are multiples of 400MB, except for a few <4G created long ago for Knoppix installations from CD.

I doubt for _most_ users with 4GB or more of RAM that having any swap partition at all makes much sense. I have several systems with a far smaller swap partition than installed RAM size.

A lot of factors can play into decisions about how many partitions and appropriate sizes for them. More individual partitions can make backup/restore processes simpler, but for many, simple is best, meaning as few partitions as you can get away with.

IOW, it depends. There is no best for everyone.

If I just define a bootable /boot partition and / partition, will the installer know what to put in each? -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Felix Miata wrote:

On 2014-06-20 13:34 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

...

If I just define a bootable /boot partition and / partition, will the installer know what to put in each?

Very little ever gets put into /boot by any installer, mostly kernels, kernel configs, initrd, and bootloader files. With only two partitions, everything else will automatically go into /.

That is my objective. -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Anton Aylward wrote:

On 06/20/2014 04:34 PM, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

If I just define a bootable /boot partition and / partition, will the installer know what to put in each?

Yes. But we constantly advise people to use a separate /home partition so that you can eave it out of the upgrade. You may want. For example/home, /srv, /local to be unchanged across upgrades. Often it is easier to install than upgrade and so format the / and /usr, so you want /home and /srv and /local left out of this.

For the same reason, /opt should ALSO be a separate filesystem. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Anton Aylward wrote:

On 06/20/2014 04:34 PM, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

If I just define a bootable /boot partition

How large the /boot partition should be depends on how many kernels you want to keep around.

I have a 1G /boot formatted as ext2 and its about 20% full with 4 kernels: desktop and default for current and previous. Some people keep more 'previous' generations. You can configure this.

1 GB sounds fine. It is unlikely that I will upgrade the kernel. -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-06-20 23:27, Tony Alfrey wrote:

1 GB sounds fine. It is unlikely that I will upgrade the kernel.

That is, you will not do maintenance on the system... -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

On 2014-06-20 22:34, Tony Alfrey wrote:

If I just define a bootable /boot partition and / partition, will the installer know what to put in each?

Of course. However, you do not need a boot partition, except on some specific situations - and you have not described any of those being your case (some types of RAID, LVM...)- And on the other hand, you do need a big home partition, and a relatively small root. Why? Well, most people have lots of big files on /home: work files, multimedia, etc. However, the Linux system itself is quite small. Why having /home as a separate partition? Because it allows people to install another openSUSE version, formatting "/" (not /root), and leaving their own files intact in the separate /home partition. So, the default openSUSE installation choice of partitions you got is absolutely right, for most people, because that's what default are: sane choices for most people. But of course, you make your own choices. You do not need to accept the defaults. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

÷ Sat, 21 Jun 2014 01:20:41 +0200 "Carlos E. R." ÐÉÛÅÔ:

...

On 2014-06-20 22:34, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

If I just define a bootable /boot partition and / partition, will the installer know what to put in each? Of course.

However, you do not need a boot partition, except on some specific situations - and you have not described any of those being your case (some types of RAID, LVM...)-

Having separate /boot with simple filesystem like ext2 is more robust. I have seen cases when grub failed to read ext4 after unclean shutdown because it does not use journal replay.

This is what I had heard from my old listmates in the days of Caldera. I also must say that I /tried/ to install everything onto one big partition (besides swap) and the installation failed. Anyway, now I need to learn enough about GRUB to add the WindowsXP drive. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 06/21/2014 07:23 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2014-06-21 07:26, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

I also must say that I /tried/ to install everything onto one big partition (besides swap) and the installation failed.

It should not. I have several installs done that way.

+1 -- There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that opinions are worthless because they are badly argued. Thomas H. Huxley -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

michael norman wrote:

...

Anyway, now I need to learn enough about GRUB to add the WindowsXP drive.

When I dual booted SUSE (most recently 12.3) and using legacy GRUB it picked up the Windows partition and added it automatically. If it didn't I just went into YAST and added it.

FWIW I always change to GRUB legacy from the default GRUB2 simply because that's what I know how to use. All of this is simply accomplished on installation first thing I untick is automatic installation and after that review every option to find what you want/prefer.

Apologies if others have covered any of this, I haven’t read every word of the thread.

...

When I started, I had a fully independent WindowsXP drive. It would boot all by itself. Yesterday when I reinstalled SUSE13.1 on its own drive, and had the Windows drive plugged in, it added the Windows drive to grub.cfg. But now I discover the following: 1. If I leave the Windows drive /out/ of the BIOS order and leave the SUSE drive /in/ the BIOS order, the Windows drive appears in the GRUB splash screen but will not boot. 2. If I leave the SUSE drive /out/ of the BIOS order /entirely/ and leave the Windows drive /in/ the BIOS order, the same GRUB splash screen appears, and everything will boot. It sounds as though the SUSE install wrote the MBR to the Windows drive and the SUSE drive. Is this correct? If so, this really ticks me off. I specifically selected in the install that the boot loader gets written to the SUSE MBR. I wanted the Windows drive to remain uncorrupted. I expected to have to add the piece of drive re-mapping code to grub.cfg so that Windows would boot. That re-mapping stuff is not in grub.cfg. -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2014-06-21 14:28, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

But now I discover the following:

1. If I leave the Windows drive /out/ of the BIOS order and leave the SUSE drive /in/ the BIOS order, the Windows drive appears in the GRUB splash screen but will not boot.

2. If I leave the SUSE drive /out/ of the BIOS order /entirely/ and leave the Windows drive /in/ the BIOS order, the same GRUB splash screen appears, and everything will boot.

It sounds as though the SUSE install wrote the MBR to the Windows drive and the SUSE drive.

Or that grub and Linux ignores the bios (they always did, mostly).

...

Is this correct? If so, this really ticks me off.

You can find out.

Download this script:

https://github.com/arvidjaar/bootinfoscript/raw/master/bootinfoscript

and run it. It will extract lots of information about your boot system and partitions, including how and where boot sequence is set up.

Holy S^%&, where did you get this thing? It is very impressive! Yes, just as I suspected, the SUSE installer put grub on the Windows disk! I would certainly like to take that off and return the Windows disk to its previous state and simply put the four lines of code into grub.cfg on the SuSE disk that do the mapping thing that make Windows think it's the first disk. -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-06-21 11:15 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

Does anyone know how I can fix the MBR in the Windows disk and restore it to what it was and then go back and clean up grub.cfg in SuSE?

Probably everyone here except you. Option 1 is my favorite: option 1: a-disconnect Linux HD b-boot a PC DOS or MS-DOS or FreeDOS floppy, or a FreeDOS CD c-FDISK /MBR option 2: a-disconnect Linux HD b-boot XP CD into recovery console c-fixmbr option3: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Aopensuse.org+restore+windows+mbr Before you do any of them you should make sure Grub gets or got installed to the / partition and/or the Linux HD's MBR. If the / partition is not a primary, then more steps will likely be required to boot back into Linux. -- "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

On 2014-06-21 20:15, Tony Alfrey wrote:

This totally sucks!!. It means that my Windows disk is dependent on the existence of the SuSE disk. If I pull the SuSE disk out, and try to boot the Windows disk, grub in the Windows MBR looks for the Windows disk as sdb when it now the /first/ drive in the system!

Not exactly. Grub, installed in the first disk (using the MBR sector, and some hidden sectors on the first track) has inside coded to transfer control to the boot partition of the second disk. Missing this disk, nothing can boot. Missing the first disk, same thing. Changing the disks ordering, problem. That is, grub is half on one disk, half on the other.

Does anyone know how I can fix the MBR in the Windows disk and restore it to what it was and then go back and clean up grub.cfg in SuSE?

See my previous post. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

Tony Alfrey wrote:

Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

On 2014-06-21 20:15, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

This totally sucks!!. It means that my Windows disk is dependent on the existence of the SuSE disk. If I pull the SuSE disk out, and try to boot the Windows disk, grub in the Windows MBR looks for the Windows disk as sdb when it now the /first/ drive in the system!

Not exactly.

Grub, installed in the first disk (using the MBR sector, and some hidden sectors on the first track) has inside coded to transfer control to the boot partition of the second disk. Missing this disk, nothing can boot. Missing the first disk, same thing. Changing the disks ordering, problem.

That is, grub is half on one disk, half on the other.

There is a complete grub on the SuSE drive as far as I can see. I pulled the Windows IDE drive and grub comes up nicely with the menu of the drives and I select SuSE and linux boots. So I think that all I have to do is put in the Windows drive, pull out the SUSE drive and restore the MBR on the Windows drive.

Then fix the grub.conf file on SuSE to add the mapping thing that make Windows think it's the first drive.

Comments?

Let me just add one comment/question: If the Windows drive will boot independently all by itself w/o any help from grub, why would grub need to /add/ anything to the Windows drive to boot it. Let me just add that this is the first time I've ever used grub. I've used LILO forever. All one does is map the drive numbers correctly in lilo.conf, run /sbin/lilo and you are done. Windows boots. IMHO, LILO is the simplest thing since sliced bread. If I knew that I would not break something, I'd put in a lilo.conf file that I KNOW will work and run /sbin/lilo and be done with it. I actually may try just that now that I know that, eventually, I can install SuSE 13.1 -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

В Sat, 21 Jun 2014 16:29:53 -0400 Felix Miata пишет:

Linda likes Lilo, but I think very few if any of the rest of us here do. I find Grub Legacy the easiest of Linux loaders to use and understand, in part for this one important reason:

If I screw up the config (menu.lst) file so that I can't boot from any existing stanza, I (anyone) can quickly edit on the fly any of those presented in the menu, or drop all the way to a grub> prompt, in order to get booted without hunting down and booting rescue media.

Could you hint what of this is not possible with grub2? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-06-22 06:12, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2014-06-22 07:55 (GMT+0400) Andrey Borzenkov composed:

...

Could you hint what of this is not possible with grub2?

Note that I was writing "I", not "one". I don't know Grub2 well enough to be working with its shell, so could not write from experience in paragraph 2 about anything except Grub legacy.

It happens the same to me. I have systems installed with grub2, but customizing or repairing, when needed, is more difficult for me. With grub 1 I know my way about. I know that eventually I'll have to switch over to grub2 my main system, but meanwhile, grub 1 allows me to have a heavily customized menu. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

On 2014-06-22 13:26, John Connor wrote:

My 2 bits (having used all 3, lilo, grub legacy and grub2) - Grub legacy is even easier to use than lilo, changes to menu.lst appear at next boot (no need to run anything, just reboot), and the menu.lst format is concise, everything you normally need to change is in menu.lst (default boot title etc.).

It is true. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

Carlos E. R. wrote:

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

On 2014-06-21 22:13, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

Let me just add one comment/question:

If the Windows drive will boot independently all by itself w/o any help from grub, why would grub need to /add/ anything to the Windows drive to boot it.

Because you need grub on the disk that is the first one in the BIOS boot order, regardless of where is Linux installed.

Yes, of course. I expect to install grub (or LILO or ANY boot loader) on the first disk in the system, which will ABSOLUTELY be a linux disk. Windows will be a "secondary" disk. And that has been the way that I have had it with LILO for nearly 10 years! But by a choice of mapping in the boot loader, the Windows disk can be "deluded" into thinking that it is on the first disk, and not polluted by changing its MBR. The whole point is to keep the Windows disk as an INDEPENDENT disk entity that can be inserted, and booted, into anywhere, any computer, any time. I have to say that my previous implementation of LILO with two linux disks and one windows disk was remarkably simple and transparent. Yes, if I changed the kernel, I had to change the kernel name in lilo.conf. That is hardly an issue for me. LILO works. There are no "parts 1" and "parts 2", grub and grub2 or worse yet grub1.5. Summary: If I knew that I could DUMP grub, and write a lilo.config file that has worked for 10 years, and run /sbin/lilo, and that would eliminate grub from the process, I would do it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Answering this a bit late as Comcast redirected my email to their circular file for 2 days (though they deny changing it, it was done too precisely to have been random) and had not been changed almost 2 years...Grrr... Carlos E. R. wrote:

Yes, lilo is easier to understand and control, I agree. Some people here use it. But it has a severe disadvantage: that after a kernel update or some changes, if you forget to run "lilo", the system will be unbootable. With grub you never face this particular problem, grub has code to actually read the filesystem and find things.

---- Which caused alot of people grief when the grub routines for xfs got out of sync with the code in the kernel. Suddenly xfs was no longer "ok" for a boot disk. Those that had one could find not only a non-bootable system, but that grub had corrupted data because it's file-system routines weren't the ones in the kernel. lilo uses the kernel I/O routines to support the lowest common denominator. I don't ever play around in grub. When I make a new kernel, if it doesn't work, I book from the previous. No editing in a special limited console prompt. I find typing in a restricted environment frustrating. If I make a mistake, reboot using the previous kernel. Also, some said you have to "rerun lilo after running make kernel and make modules and make install. Um... I combine the install steps into 1 script so I never have to run lilo -- it's always run when I install the modules for the current kernel. lilo has fewer moving parts to break. Given that xfs still isn't recommended for a boot disk *because* of the damage grub did 6-8 years ago, you'd think people would learn that editing w/o an OS is an inexact science. I don't know if ELILO or UFI boots will prove as solid as lilo has been for the bios, but it is telling which boot loader is the default provided by the kernel devs...

Lilo worked by hardcoding in the boot code the exact location of all the sectors that had to be loaded into memory in order to boot the system. Lilo boot code could not read files by name or path on its own: instead the "lilo" command, when run from inside the operating system, wrote the actual addresses of the sectors it needed to read.

Thus a simple change, like copying a needed file again, would make lilo fail to boot.

--- Which is exactly what happened with grub and xfs... grub tried to copy files but did it on a live file system and not through the OS-file routines. Junk got written to disk and grub couldn't boot. It took almost a year before grub was updated enough to work with xfs and other journaled file systems. Vs. -- recording block ID's still worked as that's how the BIOS has booted for 30+ years... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

s. IMHO, LILO is the simplest thing since sliced bread.

Yes, lilo is easier to understand and control, I agree. Some people here use it. But it has a severe disadvantage: that after a kernel update or some changes, if you forget to run "lilo", the system will be unbootable. With grub you never face this particular problem, grub has code to actually read the filesystem and find things.

--- Oh -- and you are not at a disadvantage if you don't put the new modules and on a ram disk and regenerate that? How is that different? Doesn't the normal grub process as suse has it setup require a rebuilt initfs? If you screw that up or it changes and you don't regenerate the disk and copy it into place, doesn't it cause similar problems if you don't run lilo's sector-map step? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

...

--- Oh -- and you are not at a disadvantage if you don't put the new modules and on a ram disk and regenerate that?

How is that different? Doesn't the normal grub process as suse has it setup require a rebuilt initfs?

Not that I'm aware of. Bootloader setup in openSUSE is done by update-bootloader and I do not see a single mkinitrd call in there.

How do you get modules from a new kernel onto your ramdisk? If the ram disk is not dependent on kernel modules for specific hardware, then can someone explain why a ramdisk is needed to pre-boot from? -- 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 2014-06-26 04:17, Linda Walsh wrote:

Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

...

...

--- Oh -- and you are not at a disadvantage if you don't put the new modules and on a ram disk and regenerate that?

How is that different? Doesn't the normal grub process as suse has it setup require a rebuilt initfs?

...

Not that I'm aware of. Bootloader setup in openSUSE is done by update-bootloader and I do not see a single mkinitrd call in there.

How do you get modules from a new kernel onto your ramdisk?

If the ram disk is not dependent on kernel modules for specific hardware, then can someone explain why a ramdisk is needed to pre-boot from?

It is a different issue, Linda. You can have a kernel with all the needed modules for booting included in the kernel itself, thus not as modules, thus a big kernel, or you can instead have an auxiliary archive with the needed modules for booting, as modules, available at boot time, before the filesystem is accessible, with a resulting kernel that is smaller (both in memory foot print and as file). With modularity the distribution can distribute the same smallish kernel for everybody, and have instead adjusted the module archive (initrd) per installation, customized on each single machine. But that initrd archive is not created at all by any grub related tool. You can modify the archive, and do not tell grub about the modification. Grub will happily load it for the kernel on boot. Lilo can not do that, you have to recreate the lilo map. The initrd archive is a kernel feature, not a grub feature. Grub simply provides a service that the kernel needs. And this feature allows distributions to provide a method that works for (almost) everybody without tinkering, which is the goal of a distribution, as a distribution. You, as administrator of your machines, can act differently. You could also design a booting procedure with grub and without initrd, if you wished. Don't ask me how, I'm not interested in doing it, though :-) By the way, I just looked up "initrd" in the wikipedia. It says about the same thing I wrote above - and I promise I did not read the article before that, nor did I write anything in the wikipedia. The body of the article mentions neither grub nor lilo - only one item in the "references section" about "dracut", not initrd, has the word "grub" on it. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlOr4S0ACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UPxgCfUch1fNRAs5ba40VV+82t29rG 3ecAn3zrQT9smAj0ntHxRlNLLBnMp7OQ =1Mkf -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Felix Miata wrote:

On 2014-06-21 13:04 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

...

Then fix the grub.conf file on SuSE to add the mapping thing that make Windows think it's the first drive.

...

Comments?

/boot/grub/grub.conf does not exist in openSUSE. That file is an abortion of the old upstream Grub v1 - - - ..., which was designed for compatibility with FAT 8.3 filenames.

/boot/grub/menu.lst is the file to edit, either by you or YaST.

So it says in many places and how-to's. But in the boot.readme file on my SuSE, that talks about several different boot loaders, it talks about /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub2/grub.cfg I DO NOT have /boot/grub/menu.lst, I HAVE /boot/grub2/grub.cfg This is the file that the script thing that Carlos sent me reports as the place that holds the "instructions" for grub. I can attach it if necessary, but /that/ is what is configuring my boot process, as far as I can tell given my lack of skills w/ grub. I repeat, there is no file /boot/grub/menu.lst. -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2014-06-21 22:49, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

Felix Miata wrote:

...

On 2014-06-21 13:04 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

...

...

/boot/grub/grub.conf does not exist in openSUSE. That file is an abortion of the old upstream Grub v1 - - - ..., which was designed for compatibility with FAT 8.3 filenames.

/boot/grub/menu.lst is the file to edit, either by you or YaST. So it says in many places and how-to's. But in the boot.readme file on my SuSE, that talks about several different boot loaders, it talks about

/boot/grub/menu.lst

/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

I DO NOT have

/boot/grub/menu.lst,

I HAVE

/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Notice that it is grub2 in the path, not "/boot/grub/grub.conf" as you said first. This is peculiar to openSUSE, because we still have support for both grub 1 and 2.

...

I can attach it if necessary, but /that/ is what is configuring my boot process, as far as I can tell given my lack of skills w/ grub.

No, don't touch that file, it is created automatically and your changes destroyed. You change instead "/etc/default/grub", and run certain command to apply changes, that is documented inside that file.

Everything in this file (etc/default/grub) refers to making changes in /boot/grub2/grub.cfg. There is no /boot/grub/menu.lst on my SuSE installation. I'll study it anyway, but my preference is to 1. fix the MBR of Windows and 2. insert a LILO.conf file that has worked for 10 years.

...

I repeat, there is no file /boot/grub/menu.lst.

It belongs to grub 1.

There is no /boot/grub1 directory on this SuSE 13.1 install. There is /boot/grub and boot/grub2. The file /boot/grub/menu.lst does not exist on this installation.

-- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-06-21 13:49 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

So it says in many places and how-to's. But in the boot.readme file on my SuSE, that talks about several different boot loaders, it talks about

/boot/grub/menu.lst

/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

I DO NOT have

/boot/grub/menu.lst,

Belongs to Grub Legacy.

I HAVE

/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Belongs to Grub2.

This is the file that the script thing that Carlos sent me reports as the place that holds the "instructions" for grub.

I can attach it if necessary, but /that/ is what is configuring my boot process, as far as I can tell given my lack of skills w/ grub.

I repeat, there is no file /boot/grub/menu.lst.

That is because you accepted the default openSUSE bootloader Grub2 instead of the simpler Grub Legacy. Edits you make to menu.lst are not discarded at updates times that call yast2-bootloader or perl-Bootloader to add new or remove old kernels. Edits you make to grub.cfg directly will normally be lost at updates times. With Grub2, user edits need to be made indirectly for incorporation by the Grub2 menu construction process. -- "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

Please recall that I'm trying to boot my Windows disk from grub. SuSE boots fine, but a section in grub2/grub.cfg for Windows that does not boot Windows. Windows boots fine if I change the BIOS drive order. OK, so I look on-line and I see that for /grub/menu.lst the code to /add/ to the Windows section of grub is: map (hd0,0) (hd1,0) map (hd1,0) (hd0,0) rootnoverify (hd1,0) makeactive chainloader +1 But my question is... might there be a difference for the configuration used for /grub2/grub.cfg ? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-06-22 05:29, Carl Hartung wrote:

On Sat, 21 Jun 2014 19:43:26 -0700 Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

Boot the Windows installation media, get to the repair tools and a command line. Invoke:

X:SOURCES> bootrec /FixMbr X:SOURCES> bootrec /FixBoot

Right.

Reboot and test to confirm that Windows boots successfully. Rinse, research and repeat as necessary to get Windows booting successfully.

Then, and only then ...

Reboot the openSUSE DVD, select 'rescue mode' and log in as root (no password needed)

But he said that the first or main disk in the bios order is the Linux disk, so this one should boot automatically. In this case, running os-prober should be enough. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

On 2014-06-22 16:22, Carl Hartung wrote:

On Sun, 22 Jun 2014 15:09:50 +0200 Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

But he said that the first or main disk in the bios order is the Linux disk, so this one should boot automatically.

In this case, running os-prober should be enough.

Thanks, Carlos, I guess I missed that part (it was late.) :-) When I read that grub2 was installed and broken; that he would have preferred grub (I felt this way, too, for some time) and that he was contemplating lilo (permanently? as a workaround?) I offered my 2 cents in case it saved him a lot of time and hassle :-)

No, the thread is so long that it is difficult to keep track. Don't worry. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

Felix Miata wrote: <snip>

...

But my question is... might there be a difference for the configuration used for /grub2/grub.cfg ?

Definitely. http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Changes-from-GRUB-Legacy

I think that the solution may be here: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Multi_002dboot-manual-conf... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 06/22/2014 08:11 AM, Billie Walsh wrote:

I remembered reading about this a while back somewhere and took some time to remember what it was. I haven't tried it myself so, caveat emptor.

Grub Customizer

https://launchpad.net/grub-customizer

If you want to try it ... http://software.opensuse.org/package/grub-customizer -- /"\ \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML Mail / \ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-06-22 15:24, Tony Alfrey wrote:

In the /boot/grub2/grub.cfg file is a section where one can add custom entries w/o messing up the existing entries.

Please go to the top of the file and read: # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # Then continue reading ;-)

But after I write the grub.cfg file, is there not some command equivalent to /sbin/lilo needed to actually make a change to the MBR or does the MBR refer directly to the grub.cfg file?

Bingo! No! That's the huge advantage of Grub! :-)) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

I did it! I have two drives; 1. a SATA drive plugged into a PCI card. Grub2 thinks it is hd0, SuSE is on the first partition. 2. an IDE drive plugged into the first IDE port on the motherboard. Windows is on the first partition. Grub2 thinks it is hd1. In BIOS, the order is Floppy CDROM SCSI (the bios thinks that the SATA card is a SCSI drive) If I replace SCSI with HD0, Windows boots all by itself. Otherwise (if BIOS is as shown) I see a Grub2 boot screen with the selections that SuSE installed; a SUSE 13.1, an advanced features SUSE 13.1 and a Windows XP selection which doesn't boot. Add this menu entry in /boot/grub2/grub.cfg in the "custom entries" section. menuentry 'Windows XP' { set root=(hd1,1) chainloader +1 drivemanp (hd1) (hd0) boot { A fourth Windows XP selection appears that boots. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

÷ Sun, 22 Jun 2014 09:32:39 -0700 Tony Alfrey ÐÉÛÅÔ:

...

Grub2 thinks it is hd0 Grub2 thinks it is hd1.

Do not rely on this. That is why grub2 has "search" command to find how disk that you need is actually called.

...

Add this menu entry in /boot/grub2/grub.cfg in the "custom entries" section.

This will be lost next time grub.cfg is rebuilt (kernel update, grub update, calling yast bootloader).

This is all true, and there is the search feature in the SuSE version of the menuentry for Windows XP, but apparently it gets it wrong (in assigning 'root'). So for now I just left it out and assigned it manually with set root=(hd1,1) Also, for some unknown reason, Windows doesn't like drivemap -s (hd1) (hdo) that SuSE has chosen. It only wants the one-way map swap drivemap (hd1) (hd0) And it all may be lost next time I update the kernel, but I can expect the SuSE partition to boot, and then I can go back in and fix the Windows menuentry. -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

В Sun, 22 Jun 2014 09:58:15 -0700 Tony Alfrey пишет:

This is all true, and there is the search feature in the SuSE version of the menuentry for Windows XP, but apparently it gets it wrong (in assigning 'root').

Could you upload output of bootinfoscript to susepaste.org and post link here?

So for now I just left it out and assigned it manually with

set root=(hd1,1)

Also, for some unknown reason, Windows doesn't like

drivemap -s (hd1) (hdo)

that SuSE has chosen. It only wants the one-way map swap

drivemap (hd1) (hd0)

Did you try without "drivemap" command? If I understand correctly what happens, this line is redundant in your case.

And it all may be lost next time I update the kernel, but I can expect the SuSE partition to boot, and then I can go back in and fix the Windows menuentry.

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

В Sun, 22 Jun 2014 11:23:29 -0700 Tony Alfrey пишет:

Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

...

÷ Sun, 22 Jun 2014 09:58:15 -0700 Tony Alfrey ÐÉÛÅÔ:

...

This is all true, and there is the search feature in the SuSE version of the menuentry for Windows XP, but apparently it gets it wrong (in assigning 'root').

Could you upload output of bootinfoscript to susepaste.org and post link here?

OK, but you'll have to wait just a bit.

Do you still have the very first output, when you had this situation:

1. If I leave the Windows drive /out/ of the BIOS order and leave the SUSE drive /in/ the BIOS order, the Windows drive appears in the GRUB splash screen but will not boot.

2. If I leave the SUSE drive /out/ of the BIOS order /entirely/ and leave the Windows drive /in/ the BIOS order, the same GRUB splash screen appears, and everything will boot.

Am I right that initially you had single drive where Windows was installed; later you added one more drive with Linux? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Felix Miata wrote:

On 2014-06-22 09:32 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

...

I did it!

About time!

...

I have two drives;

That we knew.

...

1. a SATA drive plugged into a PCI card.

There's another detail I don't recall seeing you mention before. Mixing HDs on addin cards and on motherboard controllers complicates things. They may get further complicated if the addin card has its own option whether to be bootable or not.

...

Grub2 thinks it is hd0, SuSE is on the first partition.

...

2. an IDE drive plugged into the first IDE port on the motherboard. Windows is on the first partition. Grub2 thinks it is hd1.

...

In BIOS, the order is Floppy CDROM SCSI (the bios thinks that the SATA card is a SCSI drive)

That's an old motherboard, right? There didn't exist SATA cards way back when. Calling addin HD controllers SCSI has to do with the way they are handled by the BIOS, a legacy going back to the '80s before IDE displaced MFM and RLL, and no HD controllers on motherboards existed. BIOS typically gave preference to bootable SCSI over MFM, RLL and later IDE, a preference typically still present in recent years and all years since IDE "controllers" began appearing built into motherboards.

...

If I replace SCSI with HD0, Windows boots all by itself. Otherwise (if BIOS is as shown) I see a Grub2 boot screen with the selections that SuSE installed; a SUSE 13.1, an advanced features SUSE 13.1 and a Windows XP selection which doesn't boot.

This BIOS setup should have been addressed had we known about the addin controller.

The BIOS setup or the SATA card was never really a problem. I played with that back and forth to diagnose what things were going on. It saved my butt because I would not have been able to boot Windows without it. And I always knew what Grub was calling the drives because I could see that in the yast bootloader feature. All that is really necessary in all of that is to know what Grub calls the drives.

...

Add this menu entry in /boot/grub2/grub.cfg in the "custom entries" section.

...

menuentry 'Windows XP' { set root=(hd1,1) chainloader +1 drivemanp (hd1) (hd0) boot {

...

A fourth Windows XP selection appears that boots.

How does that selection differ from the one above?

1. The search feature in Grub2 did not assign the correct drive,partition to root, so I assigned it manually. 2. Windows did not like the two-way drive map drivemap -s (hd1) (hd0) Note the "-s" -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 22/06/14 22:11, Billie Walsh wrote:

On 06/21/2014 10:34 PM, Felix Miata wrote:

...

On 2014-06-21 19:43 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

...

Please recall that I'm trying to boot my Windows disk from grub. SuSE boots fine, but a section in grub2/grub.cfg for Windows that does not boot Windows. Windows boots fine if I change the BIOS drive order. OK, so I look on-line and I see that for /grub/menu.lst the code to /add/ to the Windows section of grub is:

...

map (hd0,0) (hd1,0) map (hd1,0) (hd0,0) rootnoverify (hd1,0) makeactive chainloader +1

...

But my question is... might there be a difference for the configuration used for /grub2/grub.cfg ?

Definitely. http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Changes-from-GRUB-Legacy

If you alter config with YaST, it should be right. The first HD partition in Grub Legacy (menu.lst) is ",0", but in Grub2 "grub.cfg" it is ",1".

I remembered reading about this a while back somewhere and took some time to remember what it was. I haven't tried it myself so, caveat emptor.

Grub Customizer

https://launchpad.net/grub-customizer

On a command line, as ROOT (ie, 'su -' <password> execute: grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg assuming that you only have 2 systems installed- Windows and openSUSE 13.1, say (where the openSUSE version is actually using grub2 and not grub legacy). This will create the correct grub menu which will boot either oS or Windows. Go to this article, save it and keep reading it until what it contains becomes second nature - and bookmark this article for others in the future: http://www.linuxidentity.com/us/down/articles/LSK_multi_distro_install_US.pd... NOTE: Make a backup of /boot before doing above just in case. BC -- Using openSUSE 13.1, KDE 4.13.2 & kernel 3.15.1-1 on a system with- AMD FX 8-core 3.6/4.2GHz processor 16GB PC14900/1866MHz Quad Channel RAM Gigabyte AMD3+ m/board; Gigabyte nVidia GTX660 GPU -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Le 21/06/2014 22:04, Tony Alfrey a écrit :

There is a complete grub on the SuSE drive as far as I can see.

I don't exactly know how you did choose the grub position, but be warned than YaST allow to tick *several* positions (several partitions) at the same time, and changing partition do not mean the old setup is removed, the new is simply added. AFAIR, there is (was?) an option in yast to rewrite a standard mbr. and the very "MBR" word is misleading. There is only one real MBR, that is only one default boot sector on a system, the first sector of the first disk in bios order - and this order is not always the one obvious. all this makes it very difficult to test a system, it should be necessary to restore the first sector of any disk with dd to make extensive tests jdd -- http://www.dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Felix Miata wrote:

On 2014-06-21 13:04 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

...

Then fix the grub.conf file on SuSE to add the mapping thing that make Windows think it's the first drive.

...

Comments?

/boot/grub/grub.conf does not exist in openSUSE. That file is a Fedora/Redhat & siblings abortion of the old upstream Grub v1 - - - ..., which was designed for compatibility with FAT 8.3 filenames.

/boot/grub/menu.lst is the file to edit, either by you or YaST.

I think we discussed this; the SuSE install process used /boot/grub2/grub.cfg There is a directory /boot/grub, but it has a half dozen binaries. Here is the output of the bootinfoscript Carlos provided. Note that I repaired the MBR of the Windows disk. => Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector 1 of the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks for (,msdos2)/boot/grub2. => Windows 2000/XP/2003 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb. -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-06-21 18:39, Tony Alfrey wrote:

Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

You can find out.

Download this script:

https://github.com/arvidjaar/bootinfoscript/raw/master/bootinfoscript

and run it. It will extract lots of information about your boot system and partitions, including how and where boot sequence is set up.

Holy S^%&, where did you get this thing?

Look carefully at the url, and you will find someone around with a "similar" email ;-)

It is very impressive! Yes, just as I suspected, the SUSE installer put grub on the Windows disk!

There is probably a backup copy of that MBR somewhere in /boot. Otherwise, you can run in Windows 7: "bootrec.exe /fixmbr" to repair it. Mind, this will immediately break Linux booting, so first reinstall grub in the correct place.

I would certainly like to take that off and return the Windows disk to its previous state and simply put the four lines of code into grub.cfg on the SuSE disk that do the mapping thing that make Windows think it's the first disk.

It is not that trivial to convince the installer not to use the first disk in the system. You have to look carefully at all the options and tabs to make sure. Many people actually disconnect that first disk (that has Windows on it, typically), and later tell the bios to boot directly from the second disk. What I do is: - Tell the installer to put grub on the partition that contains the boot directory - Tell the installer to boot from that partition, and mark it as bootable. - Tell the installer to not write generic code (or anything) to the MBR - unless the disk doesn't contain Windows or is new. If it is not the first or main disk in the bios, make it so, and make sure it has an entry to boot Windows from it. It should be automatic with osprober in grub2. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

Felix Miata wrote:

On 2014-06-21 05:28 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

...

I specifically selected in the install that the boot loader gets written to the SUSE MBR. I wanted the Windows drive to remain uncorrupted.

Only twice in my recollection has any FOSS bootloader been installed to any MBR under this roof. The first was Corel Linux, which presented no opportunity to choose a bootloader, or its location. The second was Xandros, which essentially did the same thing. These were out of hundreds, if not over a thousand, Linux installations since last century.

IMO, putting non-legacy code into the MBR of a BIOS multiboot-with-Windows system is pointlessly and unnecessarily asking for trouble, like you've encountered and more.

Well, then we need to talk to whomever designed the SuSE install disk to understand how that code ended up in my Windows MBR, in spite of my watching carefully during installation to see that the boot loader ended up ONLY on the linux disk. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-06-21 23:26, Tony Alfrey wrote:

Well, then we need to talk to whomever designed the SuSE install disk to understand how that code ended up in my Windows MBR, in spite of my watching carefully during installation to see that the boot loader ended up ONLY on the linux disk.

This is how I do it: http://susepaste.org/28766333 http://susepaste.org/view/11545420 And there is another setting that doesn't show in those photos that writes code to the MBR and which you have to disable. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

On 2014-06-21 23:48, James Knott wrote:

On 06/21/2014 01:26 AM, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

Anyway, now I need to learn enough about GRUB to add the WindowsXP drive.

In my experience the Windows partition is added automagically.

Yes, that whats the "probe for other systems" click in yast boot loader (grub 2) config does, I understand. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 В Sat, 21 Jun 2014 13:22:16 +0200 "Carlos E. R." пишет:

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

On 2014-06-21 06:46, Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

...

В Sat, 21 Jun 2014 01:20:41 +0200 "Carlos E. R." <> пишет:

...

...

However, you do not need a boot partition, except on some specific situations - and you have not described any of those being your case (some types of RAID, LVM...)-

Having separate /boot with simple filesystem like ext2 is more robust. I have seen cases when grub failed to read ext4 after unclean shutdown because it does not use journal replay.

That, as some around here love to say, would be a reportable bug ;-)

Primary maintainer of grub2 is rather unwilling to add journal support.

Actually, I do have a boot partition, but simply because I did the partitioning when it was still recommended to have a separate boot. For some partition types it has been a necessity at times: for instance, xfs. Reiserfs also requires a separate boot, not for booting, but for thawing from hibernation (there is a bugzilla on that). At some point it broke, grub having difficulties to reconstruct the reiserfs journal on memory.

Way back I switched to having separate boot partition when grub started to need couple of minutes to read kernel and initrd due to journal replay on reiserfs.

So yes, I have to agree that having a separate boot may be safer and allows coverage of more cases.

- -- Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 В Sat, 21 Jun 2014 14:30:43 +0200 "Carlos E. R." пишет:

...

...

that). At some point it broke, grub having difficulties to reconstruct the reiserfs journal on memory.

Way back I switched to having separate boot partition when grub started to need couple of minutes to read kernel and initrd due to journal replay on reiserfs.

Yes, exactly that issue. But it only happened after hibernation - wait, it would also happen on unclean shutdown. Did you have that issue on normal boots?

It was long ago, but I think you are right, I observed it mostly after hibernation. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlOlna4ACgkQR6LMutpd94zLTgCfe+ybDiDsV1he+bPAc5k+HVLn ehUAniiN7VBgwuo1oISqj3q0n4cLJTvi =AoHG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On 06/21/2014 12:46 AM, Andrey Borzenkov wrote:

В Sat, 21 Jun 2014 01:20:41 +0200 "Carlos E. R." пишет:

...

On 2014-06-20 22:34, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

If I just define a bootable /boot partition and / partition, will the installer know what to put in each?

Of course.

However, you do not need a boot partition, except on some specific situations - and you have not described any of those being your case (some types of RAID, LVM...)-

Having separate /boot with simple filesystem like ext2 is more robust. I have seen cases when grub failed to read ext4 after unclean shutdown because it does not use journal replay.

+1 Perhaps in the days of 10M disks allocating a 'big enough but not too big' partition for /boot (and others) was problematic. Now Resource management isn't as much of an issue, no need to be parsimonious. Stability and reliability is everything in a production system. Yes, I've experimented with 'all one file system' with an early iteration of BtrFS. It was great until ... That early of version had a hiccup. I replaced it with one that had a small (200M) /boot and a slightly later version of BtrFS. Paranoia (or diligence) aside, tat later version of BtrFS was solid. But experimentation is one thing. I have BtrFS as the / file system on another machine with no problems. But I'd still advise a /boot on ext2 -- /"\ \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML Mail / \ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Dirk Gently wrote:

Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

Felix Miata wrote:

...

On 2014-06-20 12:42 (GMT-0700) Tony Alfrey composed:

...

I let the 13.1 installer set up the partitions that it wants. It set up a 1 G swap, a 20G /root partition (with all of the potentially big files like /bin, /opt, and so on) and a 400G /home partition with just my own user directory.

...

This seems totally screwy. Why not a 1G swap, a 1G /boot partition with GRUB, the kernel image, the map, etc and the rest for /root?

...

What should it be?

Logically carving up your storage device(s) is as much art as science. It should be whatever works best for you. Many favor use of LVM in order that changes are easier after installation and use, among other reasons. I don't, use LVM, because it doesn't fit my backup/restore/clone strategies.

I have never let an installer decide how my storage should be partitioned. I have virtually all my systems in multiboot configuration. I have a startup primary partition with Grub that I maintain without the help of any distro scripts. Each distro thus needs no separate /boot. Each uses the same swap. Each use the same separate /home partition except when trouble shooting issues related to having a separate /home in th first place. I also have separate partitions on most systems for /srv, /usr/local, /pub and /isos (a short name for both isos and other large files, such as videos and music).

The / partitions on my installations are smallish by most people's standards. The smallest size I commonly use is 4.4G, but the most common here are 4.8G. My largest is 10.4G. I have several that are 5.6G, some 7.2G, a few 8G and 9.6G. All used here as / are multiples of 400MB, except for a few <4G created long ago for Knoppix installations from CD.

I doubt for _most_ users with 4GB or more of RAM that having any swap partition at all makes much sense. I have several systems with a far smaller swap partition than installed RAM size.

A lot of factors can play into decisions about how many partitions and appropriate sizes for them. More individual partitions can make backup/restore processes simpler, but for many, simple is best, meaning as few partitions as you can get away with.

IOW, it depends. There is no best for everyone.

If I just define a bootable /boot partition and / partition, will the installer know what to put in each?

That would boot the boot stuff in /boot, and EVERYTHING else in / (i.e, use the same braindead everthing in one filesystem storage strategy as Microsoft's "put everying in C:" retardation.

That's what all my colleagues who were supposedly linux experts used to do back in 2000 or so. I just used to put /everything/ in /

Also, running without a swap partition is asking for trouble. A gigabytes of silicon memory costs $$. A gigabye of disk for swap space costs a couple of pennies.

I didn't say that I did not allocate swap. Every linux installation disk that I've ever used, dating from like Caldera 2.0 back in about 1997 that came on floppy disks allocates a swap partition, so that's what I do. You're a smart guy but I gotta say that your approach to discourse diminishes your credibility right out of the gate. -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2014-06-20 22:12, Felix Miata wrote:

I doubt for _most_ users with 4GB or more of RAM that having any swap partition at all makes much sense. I have several systems with a far smaller swap partition than installed RAM size.

I have 8 GiB RAM. The other day, I was using about 3 GiB of swap. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

On 2014-06-21 01:21, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Carlos E. R. <> [06-20-14 19:10]:

...

I have 8 GiB RAM. The other day, I was using about 3 GiB of swap. ... ps: system is only specked for 24gb ram but never complained when I added the 3 older 4gb chips back onto the board :^). ( Irish luck :^)?? )

My board does not allow more than 8 GiB. This instant, I have: KiB Mem: 8193508 total, 5638508 used, 2555000 free, 1090036 buffers KiB Swap: 22017008 total, 2114776 used, 19902232 free, 2363504 cached Notice the free + buffers + cached, it is bigger than swap. If I did not have swap, it would mean that I would get immediately more memory in use, with things that are not needed at all. My system would in fact be slower if I did not have swap! So I prefer those useless byte to be on disk, not ram. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

On 2014-06-21 01:47, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Carlos E. R. <> [06-20-14 19:31]:

My mail/web server only has 4gb and 3gb swap but doesn't use much swap: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3962 3772 189 1 679 2542 -/+ buffers/cache: 551 3411 Swap: 3071 1 3070

I probably should disable swap there also....

No, don't disable it. For the same amount of installed RAM, and the same system usage, having swap available can free some RAM, and speeds up your system. It is a common misunderstanding. The correct saying should be that "adding RAM speeds up the system, compared to adding or using SWAP". -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

On 2014-06-20 21:09 (GMT-0400) James Knott composed:

On 2014-06-21 01:10 (GMT+0200) Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

On 2014-06-20 16:12 (GMT-0400) Felix Miata wrote:

...

I doubt for _most_ users with 4GB or more of RAM that having any swap partition at all makes much sense. I have several systems with a far smaller swap partition than installed RAM size.

...

I have 8 GiB RAM. The other day, I was using about 3 GiB of swap.

I also have 8G and see swap use.

"makes much sense" as I wrote was about *need*. I doubt very many regular helpers here are representative of "_most_ users". Probably most of us here are multi-taskers with more than a few apps open most of the time, and probably most also have their puters on more than off if not virtually always on. My guess is that many if not most of those in this thread with swap in use and more than 4G RAM are mostly seeing the kernel preferring disk caching to keeping in RAM apps open but not actually used since a day or more ago. I'm running 32 bit on 4G RAM with swap disabled, 5 Geckos cumulatively with well over 200 open tabs (conservative estimate; far too many to count, maybe closer to 400) plus email plus Chatzilla, plus several other apps continually open (KSIRC, Konq, Kpdf, 10 Konsole tabs, Gwenview, KSnapshot, file managers in both X and tty2). Currently here there is 15% RAM free and 230 MB in disk buffers and cache. Uptime since last extended power outage is 22 days. In contrast, I think of "_most_ users" as people who do little multi-tasking, people who turn off their puters when not in active use, and people who do little with their puters other than bill paying, shopping, Facebook/Christian Mingles/Twitter/etc, Skype, email & Youtube, mostly only one or two things open at a time. -- "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

On 2014-06-21 08:02, C wrote:

I've seen you mention this before. Seriously? 200 tabs? on a browser?

I may have a hundred. I don't know of a way to get an actual count, even less a listing.

What the heck are you, a mutant octopus? How do you manage (never mind the RAM requirements) to actually find anything or even use 200 or dear lord.. 400 tabs in a browser? What are you doing that requires that insane level of open tabs/webpages? Isn't is simply faster to open the webpage when you need it vs loading things down to such an extreme level?

You are right that it is difficult to find the already opened tab. However, if you start to type the same address on a new one, FF offers to jump you to the opened one instead. Faster to open a new one? Yes, if you remember the name. Reasons? Well, I may have left the page at mid-read and want to continue later. I may want to have a second look. I may open a tab, just look at the tittle, and decide to read it later, when I have time, but not close the tab so that I see it and remember (but then I don't remember to look). Or... for instance, when doing a project with Lazarus, I need to look at the documentation for different units, functions, examples, etc, so that soon I end having a dozen tabs opened for the different section of the code I'm working on, because going back and forth in the index is cumbersome. Similarly when working on a translation, I may have several web pages of dictionaries opened, methodology docs, project coordination pages, etc. Several tabs. I may have a window with pending to read links I get from different people, lists, forums, media. Often different windows for the different sources. I may have a window investigating about some commercial product, with a tab opened for each interesting hit in google about it. And as I switch (unfinished) tasks, I do not close the related FF windows, because I do not need to, and because FF does not really free that memory till you restart it. So, it is about one FF window for each task I do, with a few tabs each related to that task. As simple as that.

I often have several tabs open in a browser, but by about 15 or 20, it becomes a huge pain to deal with. My mind is boggling (among other things) to try and comprehend a workflow that needs 400 browser tabs... there has to be a better solution.

I would like a window with a list of opened FF windows and tabs, yes. And a search feature. Yes, it is difficult. At times I do cleanups, and what I do is copy the link addresses in gnome "tomboy notes", with a brief description of each link, and a note per window or related task, then I close those FF windows. I find this more useful than keeping FF bookmarks, being free form and searchable. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

On 2014-06-21 14:26, C wrote:

On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 1:42 PM, Carlos E. R. <> wrote:

...

And as I switch (unfinished) tasks, I do not close the related FF windows, because I do not need to, and because FF does not really free that memory till you restart it.

Aha... OK. I close them. The tab bar gets waaaaaay too crowded otherwise and I end up sifting through an endless list of them when I want to go back to something.

Well, it is a FF window or more per task, with several tabs on each. And sometimes on its own desktop workspace, with the associated software used for the task.

I end up (sometimes) using a similar offline method. I did tinker with Ubernote and QuickNotes addons, but never followed through.

Gnome Tomboy notes are nice (although a few more formatting features would be nice, like indentation). They work on xfce seamlessly. The unsolved problem I have is synchronizing two or more computers.

...

I would like a window with a list of opened FF windows and tabs, yes. And a search feature. Yes, it is difficult.

Some of the FF addons will do variations on this

Possibly... should not surprise me much. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

On 2014-06-21 15:27, Anton Aylward wrote:

On 06/21/2014 07:42 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

Let's face it, guys, we're all *NIX minded. I recall seeing office users in the days of DOS3.3/WordPerfect4.2 with a home folder that had hundreds of documents, and they wondered at (a) the poor performance and (b) the inability to save any more.

That was simply lack of training. I had to teach the office staff how to create directories of their choice and store documents in there, by client name, or project, or year, or whatever. That they could store 500 files if they wished, but locating one was easier if they "got organized". FAT was a simple filesystem, that was used for more than it was designed for. It could grow to thousands of entries per directory, if you insisted, but it became very slow.

I suspect that later versions of Windows that had "My Documents", "My Music" and "My Photos" was an "automatic" effort to get around this and lead the users that MS had been dumbing down into using folders at all.

It was a way to lure dumb users into using directories without knowing they were doing so ;-) That's something Microsoft is good at. Hiding technicalities and making things easier. At least the easy parts... Complex things become even more complex, because you have to fight the automatics. I did read about using Directories in Microsoft documentations for many years. But people did not read those documents. Office staff simply got into "roblock"⁽¹⁾ mode when they tried. ((1) hint: Asimov) I'm sure that Microsoft dedicates millions of dollars to design software that is easier, and they do a fairly good job of that. The goal is create appliances like washing machines. Of course, a technically minded person like us despises that. ;-)

So you didn't know about Groups? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-organize-tabs

Not really. I just had a quick look once. So, "Ctrl + Shift + E" displays a quick view of the open tabs in the current window - but not in other windows. The instructions says how to group tabs, but those that already exist in that Window. I don't see the advantage of "group" compared to "windows"... I have my related tabs grouped on different FF windows. I rarely have more than a dozen tabs per Window. My problem is navigating Windows, not tabs. What I need is a single view of ALL opened FF windows and ALL tabs on each, with a little icon, right, and a text, be it url or tittle. With search. And features to close a window saving the links to all the tabs, like a group bookmark. That group feature is not good enough for me. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)

On 06/21/2014 02:02 AM, C wrote:

I often have several tabs open in a browser, but by about 15 or 20, it becomes a huge pain to deal with. My mind is boggling (among other things) to try and comprehend a workflow that needs 400 browser tabs... there has to be a better solution.

I often have several windows open, some with multiple tabs. There are some things I want to always be open and often there's an article or something I want to read when I have some free time. I just leave the window open so I can read the article when I get a round tuit. ;-) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Anton Aylward wrote:

On 06/20/2014 03:42 PM, Tony Alfrey wrote:

...

I let the 13.1 installer set up the partitions that it wants. It set up a 1 G swap, a 20G /root partition (with all of the potentially big files like /bin, /opt, and so on) and a 400G /home partition with just my own user directory.

This seems totally screwy. Why not a 1G swap, a 1G /boot partition with GRUB, the kernel image, the map, etc and the rest for /root?

What should it be?

I don't see what's screwy about that and I disagree about your idea of 'big' files.

And please note that there is a "/root", it is under Linux root's home directory. Roots home directory is not "/" as it is with traditional UNIX.

I have set up desktop UNIX on 20G drives. True, they did not have local services like Apache and logging was by syslog over udp, so there wasn't any /srv and /var/log was minimal. Printing was to a server host, not locally. Email was Thunderbird to imap so no local store. There were no other services that filled up /usr and /var.

The potentially big files, once those services are out of the way, are now under /home.

But lets get real about this. Why are you dealing with fixed size file systems?

Because volume management is just one more thing to go wrong. And recovering from a volume-manager problem can take DAYS. I have 2 1 TB disks in this laptop... and it's all fixed-sized file systems. linux-86ja:/local/bin # df -h | grep -v tmpfs Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda5 165G 82G 75G 52% / /dev/sdb7 340G 177G 163G 53% /home /dev/sdb5 150G 96G 55G 64% /local /dev/sdb6 350G 167G 184G 48% /scratch1 /dev/sda2 75G 20G 56G 27% /opt /dev/sda10 434G 362G 51G 88% /scratch2 /dev/sda1 979M 166M 747M 19% /boot /dev/sda9 200G 36G 165G 18% /var /dev/sda8 20G 2.7G 18G 14% /srv /dev/sda6 20G 75M 20G 1% /tmp Works great for me. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org