Considerations before you install

[big_dog1968]

big_dog1968,

There are a couple different ways, but it would probably be the easiest to do it with the latest stable version of Gparted live cd, which can be found at the link below. It is a good idea to have a Gparted live cd around anyway so it won't really be wasting a cd for this one task.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=271779

There is an option available to label the partition without doing anything else to it. It will change the UUID if you are still using UUIDs however.

Fred

Thanks again Fred. I downloaded gparted live and it worked like a charm.

[Wh1sper]

Sory I've made a typo:

sudo chown -R nathan:nathan /usr/local
is better
Sorry!
And Yes
sudo chown -R bed:bed /usr/local/games
sudo chown -R bed:bed /usr/local/bin (here in bin comes most start links for games, so enabling writing is good, also)

is smarter

[Wh1sper]

Hello All readers of this thread.
I'm really welcome fred's suggestions as they compare with my experience in many installations -- mostly.
The best way for Gamers might be an extra partition /usr/local for installation.
I really surprised that this Partition is not mentioned by anyone else.
Most, if not all Games which comes with installers -- as they are commercial or free -- recognize if they do have write permission to
/usr/local In Ubuntu and Linuxmint, the normal User does not have write permission to it.
So I am changing this with a simple sudo chown -R bed:bed /usr/local/. (bed is my login name)
This is not recommend for a multiuser system but for a Desktop PC I think this security downgrade is bearable.
Now, the games will be installed in /usr/local/games and make a link to /usr/local/bin/gamename.
So what is the plus for my approach?

Code: Select all

 /          --> 12 G
/usr/local --> 90 G
/home      --> 90 G

• This meet fred's suggestions to use more smaller partitions.
• A new Linux Installation does not imply new Installation of Games in /usr/local (ever installed UT2004 twice?)
• Now in /home there is private stuff only, no Games

Just my two cents

[redneck]

As a newbie to Linux in general and Mint in particular, this post intrigued me as I have lost some data due to a not very good user (me). I must admit that I haven't read all the posts contributed, as some of them are a bit above me (sorry).

After following the post and partitioning as follows:
swap
/
/usr
/home
I reinstalled Mint.

When the installation completed the partitions looked like this:
swap = 1.91gb
/./dev/.static/dev = 9.54gb I assume that this is just / with a different name (I hope so anyway)
/usr = 11.4gb
/home = 19.07gb

If I read the post correctly (and the dual booting one), I can now install mint without losing all my settings, is this correct. How does Mint install without destroying all the data? I would like to know how this arrangement (and I hope I got it right) works. In other words, where does mint install itself, and are the partitions I`ve done big enough and O.K..

Replies and information are most welcomed.

[Fred]

CodeMaster.Rapture,

I'll take your questions one at a time but won't repeat them for the sake of space.

1.) Ext3 is safer. Not as fast but safer.

2.) One swap is sufficient, however, two small swap partitions on separate drives will be faster than one larger swap. The sum of your physical ram plus total swap should not exceed 4 Gig. You can't use but 3.5 Gig total memory at most in standard Mint or 32 bit Ubuntu so any more than that is just wasted space. Also, there is no need in your swap being more than twice your physical RAM, even if that puts your total well below 4 Gig.

3.)I would need more information about your system, partition table, installs, intended use, etc. to give an intelligent answer to this one. Go back to the beginning of this thread and read my first post. This might give you a little direction.

4.) Download and burn the latest stable version of Gparted Live cd. Do your partitioning with it. Then during the install use the manual option and assign the partitions you have premade for the install.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=271779

5.) Yes. The Installer is pretty good at picking up the other installs during installation.

6.) NTFS is your better option here. Mint 5 recognizes and enables read/write to NTFS partitions out of the box.

7.) Depends on your intended use. For most general purpose desktop uses, I would say it is probably more trouble than it is worth. It is faster but it also requires more RAM overhead for the same program load.

I hope this was somewhat helpful to you.

Fred

[teaumaz]

Maybe a silly question, but I just partitioned like this on my 40 gig harddrive

/ -> 10000
/home -> 28000
/swap - 2000

Are there really compelling reasons to put my swap first? Apologies if this has been answered already before. I read this topic and read that partitions on the outside are faster than partitions on the inside (bottom of the list). Is that the reason?

Basically, should I redo my installation, or am I good to go the way it is at the moment?

[thetank]

I tried to do this but mint wouldn't install... seems it will only work with auto partioning and formating

[tawan]

Are there really compelling reasons to put my swap first? ... I read this topic and read that partitions on the outside are faster than partitions on the inside (bottom of the list). Is that the reason?

Basically, should I redo my installation, or am I good to go the way it is at the moment?

that is the reason but there is not much need to reinstall unless you depend heavily on swap and notice a speed issue. If you have plenty of ram then swap will barely get used.

if you want to redo it then yes swap first is to place it on the faster part of the disc.

[switch-blade]

I have read all the posts, and I understand much better what's going on. But I have a question about hidden folders. Can I make a separate partition for the hidden ".mozilla-thunderbird" folder?

Every time I have to install/reinstall a linux distro, I copy the contents of this folder (I have lost my wife's email data more than once). Doing this is a hassle. Would it work to make a separate partition for this data? Or would this data get overwritten (separate partition or not)?

[Husse]

switch-blade

That's how I have it - rather in my data folder which is a partition mounted in home I have a folder which contains the profile for Thunderbird.
When you make a fresh install you have to use the profile-manager to use the old profile folder - google for thunderbird and profile-manager and you'll find info on how to do it

[switch-blade]

Thanks for the reply Husse. I the intervening time, I was googling for some solutions (possibly on other forums). I found this page on the Mint wiki. It talks about changing the profile.ini file in the (hidden) .mozilla-thunderbird folder to point to the copy in the Data folder that you create during the process.

It wasn't much of a stretch for me to figure out that I could make a folder (which I called "tbird") in my /home/x/ directory. I copied the data from /home/x/.mozilla-thunderbird to /home/x/tbird, and I changed the profile.ini in /home/x/.mozilla-thunderbird to use the data in /home/x/tbird/.mozilla-thunderbird -- which has an original copy of the .ini file that points the data in the newly created directory. I then made a copy of the modified .ini file so that when I do a fresh install, I can copy the modified .ini back to the fresh /home/x/.mozilla-thunderbird folder.

Once I move my newly created tbird folder to its own partition, I won't have to copy this data anymore.

This is great because the biggest annoyance with fresh installs is copying data, and restoring Firefox and Thunderbird. I have a handle on FF via extensions that back up my settings. Now TB won't be an issue. Sweet!

Of course I could make my life even more simple by getting my wife to use web-based mail instead of TB -- but she's not amenable to that...

[Husse]

And I don't trust web based mail one bit - all your personal correspondence collected somewhere you have absolutely no control over, and in many cases (hotmail gmail) in the US which as a government that could block anyone's access in the name of the war against terror or some such
But perhaps I'm overly paranoid

[gychang]

What an interesting thread!

Fred, you said in one of the posts that one could leave some space unallocated and then add it to another partition when the need arises... am i right?

how do we do this?

for explanation's sake... lets say we have a hardisk partitioned like so

sda1 - swap - 1GB
sda2 - / - 8GB
sda3 - / 20GB
sda4 - unallocated - 10GB

now if / is full and we need more space how can we add the unallocated space to / ? or only part of it...?

exact question I had...

gychang

[Fred]

gychang and Shane,

Usually you would not be trying to increase the size of the root partition, if your data stores are isolated either in a separate /home partition or in one or more data partitions. Data is the thing that is hard to forecast, which grows and grows and grows. Your program complement can be reasonably forecast and planned for when laying out the partitioning in the beginning. So this would be a rare need.

Having said that, if you need to do what your example demonstrates I would suggest you use the latest stable version of the Gparted live cd iso partitioning program. We need to make a couple more assumptions here to make it complete. We will assume the first 3 partitions are primary partitions with the 10 Gig. being unallocated.

sda1 - swap - 1GB
sda2 - / - 8GB
sda3 - / 20GB
unallocated - 10GB

With Gparted you can shrink or grow partitions. Let's say you wished to add 5 Gig to the root partition. You would add 5 Gig of the unallocated space to sda3. You would then shrink sda3 by 5 Gig. putting the new unallocated space between sda2 and sda3. You would then grow sda2 by the 5 Gig of unallocated space now located between sda2 and sda3. Viola, your root partition is now 5 Gig. larger than when you started.

Please note that if you are using UUIDs, they will have changed on sda2 and sda3, so they will have to be corrected in your /etc/fstab file. Also, don't expect to accomplish this task in 5 or 10 min. The time required to do this depends on how much data you have on sda3, the speed of the hard drive, and the amount of installed RAM.

Fred

[piratesmack]

Fred:
Finally got around to reading this whole thing.

Great info, thanks!

Your second partition method with separate data partitions sounds like a good idea. I think I'm going to reinstall my OS and do something similar.

[fAnTA]

This post looks informative but still doesn't really mean much to me can you go one level back? i.e. trying to explain it to your grandmother or something? not that I'm not PC savvy, I'm just not Linux savvy at all, I know more about Swahili than swap partitions

Yes my intention is to learn as much as I can so I know what I'm doing and the best methods etc, I have toyed with the idea of installing linux for a long while then I heard about Mint and being able to install initially via windows. Great idea! although I've hit an iceberg after the install process, I guess I'll post in a separate post

[Fred]

fAnTA,

Yes please post in a new thread. Go ahead and think of any questions you might have. The only stupid question is the one that isn't asked.

I will do my best to try to enlighten you to the best of my ability.

Fred

[srkelley]

Thanks Fred, you've taught me a lot. Is it possible to make these partitions after a system has already been installed? I think separating the files and folders after install may make the system unuseable, I'm n9ot sure, but if it's possible to make up for my mistakes then I would love to.

[Fred]

srkelley,

It is hard to say what can be done with your system at this point. If you are space constrained and you have lots of data, then depending on what you currently have it could get rather complicated. As a general observation it is usually better to wait until you need to do something to your system anyway, like an upgrade to a later version and/or changing or adding a hard drive, and then rebuild your system from scratch.

Fred

[srkelley]

Wouldn't a new "/" partition need to be created for each distro, or is it somehow possible to have multiple distro's installed to one "/" partition?

I'm guessing no since os specific stuff is saved there and there would/could be conflicts right?