[H-GEN] Need help during install, or just after ;)

[Robert Brockway]

On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Michael wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I just got a brand new 6.4gig hdd installed and i partitioned it as such:
> 
> /dev/hdb7	Swap		128M	
> /dev/hdb8	/		500M	*
> /dev/hdb9	/home		100M
> /dev/hdb10	/usr/X11R6	450M
> /dev/hdb11	/usr	      1000M

Ok, I know this post is for a disk problem but I thought I'd start here.
There is certain lore with respect to disk partition that is supposed to
make the disk a little (probably less than measurably) faster.  But there
are a few things that should be kept in mind. Generally / should be
"small" because nothing will stop a Unix system in its tracks faster thana
corrupt / FS.  Unix will generally handle a corrupt anything else in its
stride, but a corrupt / really makes it cross.  So the lore I mentioned
above suggests making / small.  So what is "small".  Well zen has 20mb
while blake has 15mb,  I could prob squeze both down to 10mb.
They have seperate partitions for /tmp /usr /var and /home (as well as a
/var/spool/news).

/ should be at or near the beginning of the disk, so that is really fine,
as it faster there.

Swap should be near the middle of the disk as that way the drive head will
be passing it often.  It is also considered good to get swap between / and
/usr if you can as those are the 2 most often visited partitions.

/tmp and /var should be in good spots too if you have them (which I see
you don't above, but still worth mentioning).  I usually put /tmp after /
arguing that it is really an extention of /.  I put /var after /usr
typically.

If you want a seperate /usr/local or /opt then put that soon after /usr.

/home doesn't need to be fast so should go at/near the end of the disk.

/var/spool/news if you want one can be put in a low priority spot.

This is what I have on blake...

blake[11:23am]:~>df
Filesystem         1024-blocks  Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda1              15856    8225     6801     55%   /
/dev/hda5              63407      18    60115      0%   /tmp
/dev/hda6             594693  404676   159300     72%   /usr
/dev/hda7             346871   25193   303763      8%   /var
/dev/hda9             396500  194769   181245     52%   /home
/dev/hda10            498017  183553   287880     39%   /var/spool/news

and zen...
zen[11:35am]:~>df
Filesystem         1024-blocks  Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/hda1              19974    8914    10029     47%   /
/dev/hda4             328424  187672   140752     57%   /dos
/dev/hdb1             495714  326022   144091     69%   /usr
/dev/hdb2             396500   80692   295321     21%   /var
/dev/hdb3             319582   64441   238635     21%   /home

/tmp here is currently a link to /var/tmp. I will be changing this
behaviour.

> Now when i come to set up the "target" drives and format them 1 inode per
> 1024 bytes i believe i chose it seems to format hdb8 and hdb9 drives okish

The best idea is to make 4k per inode as it is faster than 1k per inode
(less references to the disk).  This is the default from memory.  The only
reason that this can be changed is for certain types of data where the box
mayt run out of inodes before freee blocks on the partition because it
consists of mainly small files.  The only time when this is relevant is in
certain types of data which consist mainly of small files.  Namely news
(and arguably mail) spool directories.  There might be other types of data
I have forgotten about which make having 1k oe 2k per inode worth it, but
for general filesystems stick with 4k per inode as it is more efficient.

> but when it comes to 10 and 11 it just seems to flick through the screen as
> if it hadn't formatted them correctly.  So i continue thru the install and
> when i reboot i get the following error messages

I have read Bruce's suggestion and think he is probably right.  I might
add Debian does provide alot of those devices.  It goes upto /dev/hda20
(which is the correct number btw :)

> Then the lot dies and tells me to
> reboot, this is the second time this has happened, ive done everything
> right should i give up on trying to install slackware and install
> FreeBSD/RedHat instead?

Debian? :)
 
> Any help would be really welcome about now.. :>

I hope my advice helps next time you come to repartition :)
If you're like me you wanna sqeeze every last oucnce of speed out of ide
:)
Cheers,
	-Robert

--Robert Brockway B.Sc.  Email: robert at zen.humbug.org.au, robert at icc.net.au
				r.brockway at uq.edu.au
                         WWW:   http://www.humbug.org.au/~robert
Immediate Past President of HUMBUG (http://www.humbug.org.au)


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