Considerations before you install

[mnealtx]

mnealtx,

When you have more than one user, you need to mount your data partition in both of the user's homes. With the 0755 permissions any user can read and write in that folder tree, but the visiting user can't start a new folder tree through your mount point.

Put a new mount point for your Data partition in the new user's home and the companion mounting line in fstab. Reboot and set the ownership and permissions through the new mount point to the new user. That should enable each user to create folder trees in the Data partition through their own mount points in their /home directories and also be able to read and write to the other users folder trees.

Fred

Ok... set up mount, fstab and chown ownership in each user's workspace...thanks!

Any ideas on the inability to enable the compiz settings?

[SpudGun]

Questions for fred, (or anyone else that might know)
do i have to sit my swap partition on an extended partition, like in the default install, and if i create a data partition during install, should the mount point be /home/<username>/Data

[Fred]

CaptainStrangePork,

Your swap partition can be either a primary partition or a logical partition within your extended partition. I don't know of a reason to prefer one type of partition over another for swap. My only preference for partitions is to put a primary partition first. This is because I have run into some glitches on some older equipment with the BIOS wanting to see a primary partition first. A hold over of BIOSs being designed for Windows I suppose.

As far as mounting Data partitions is concerned, you can call them anything you wish. They could be called "Movies" "Documents" or whatever. They can be mounted almost anywhere you want them. Putting them in /home/usr_name is just my personal preference. Some like to put them in /home others are happy with them in /media, which is the Ubuntu default.

Fred

[SpudGun]

Thankyou fred, that swap thing has been bugging me cos i could find no info at all on that matter, as for the mount point, i just wasn't sure if i could use my user name during an install, when that user didn't exist yet.

[defilippo]

Hello dear Minters
as soon as the final release of Gloria comes out, I'll install it and I can't wait! (have been running mandriva 2009 for a few months as my 1st linux distro)
before the install, i just wanted to make sure i do things the right way, like partitionning.
I have a 160GB disk, with 2GB ram on a computer i bought a few months ago.
what do you think of:
./ 10GB
swap 2GB
/home -the rest

Is it better to use the ext3 filesystem or ext4? I heard that ext4 was faster but that some people experienced data loss...
and same question for the logical/primary partitions... If I read well Fred's post, I should put the first partition (/) as primary?

thank you

[Aging Technogeek]

defilippo,

Your partitioning scheme should work fine. It is basically the same as mine. The only thing you might want to change is to put your swap partition first. If your system ever uses swap, it is faster from the first partition.

I've been using ext4 with an Ubuntu 9.04 install and the only problem I've had was when I tried to set up a dual boot with Mint 6 XFCE on ext3. The Mint Grub did not detect the ext4 partitions so I could not boot Ubuntu until I reinstalled it on ext3. That said, others have reported various instabilities and data loss with ext4. It is new technology so one can expect some problems. It may be best, especially for a new user, to go with ext3 at least until Mint 8 comes out next fall.

If you have a new computer, you may be able to open an extended partition first but it would be better to start with a primary partition just to develop the habit in case you ever install on an older box. Also, if you keep your / partition first as you indicated, reinstalling becomes easier because your / is isolated from your /home and can be reinstalled without loss of /home data.


Fred,

Nice to see you back. We've missed you.

[Fred]

Aging Technogeek,

Thank you sir. Real life has been a little demanding lately.

Fred

[defilippo]

Thank you, Aging Technogeek, for your detailed answer! I know what to do now

[beth]

Please tell us what partition software you are using. The software for windows will not work as well when partitioning linux. I've downloaded Mint 7, partitioned (using a windows partitioner), and it's slow and groggy to the point I'm thinking of reinstalling Mint 7 RC1. I didn't have these problems with 7 RC1 even though I used a Windows partitioner.

I've developed the habit of groaning a lot since I've caught the Linux bug. I have no Linux tools in my hefty pile of Windows Utilities.

Thanks much.
Beth

[richyrich]

Hi Beth,
GParted is included on the cd's & dvd's. If you are running from the live cd, you can run Gparted (from the menu / administration / Partition Editor) and see what partitions you already have.
Once you decide to install, it is used during the partition & format stage of the install.(with options - read more of Fred's advice, it's worth it!)

Now, if you want to partition before doing anything, you can download the GParted live cd from Sourceforge, and once burned, you can boot from it and do all of your partitioning before any install.

regards, Richard

[OB1CANOBEE]

I am new to Mint. Been on it 3 days now. I am 75 and am non technical but have the good fortune to have a good friend who called me on Skype and told me what to do step by step.
I don't think I would have managed without his help.
It is a great system and my thanks go to those who have made it available to me. We had tried to install the previous version but did not succeed as I could not get my modem working and my ISP (Telstra Australia) said they weren't interested in helping. (so I changed ISP.)
Once again thanks to all

[beth]

Hello Richard,

Thank you so much for the info. I'm wondering if I'm the only person on the planet who is scrubbing the HD and then partitioning for a clean install. You all don't seem to be doing that. I'm thinking there could be "stuff" left on the HD or MBR if a scrub is not done and the HD then checked for problems. I don't dare count the scrubs and reinstalls I've done...

Linux Mint is the best and easiest install OS I've come across, but it's evident I have much to learn. I took your advice and wrote notes on the partitioning questions. Thanks.

One final thing you will probably know, someone on this forum posted the "Linux Language". Now I can't find it. I thought it was somewhere on this thread. Does that ring a bell? I am getting lost in the "mount" language and have no clue what it all means, and am just following my notes on what to do. What is that "root" business? The "C" drive?

Thanks again.
Beth

[beth]

The GParted download was burned to a cd and it worked, but I had to do it twice before I had a little idea what I (it) was doing. It did automatically throw in an extra partition -- ext 4, which I had to remove. Mint 7 loaded quickly, and the sluggy slowness is gone!

Thank you so much!
Beth

[richyrich]

Great news Beth,
You did better than my first time! I ran the GParted from the Install disk, and forgot to add the mount locations, what a mess . .
But it was this forum that got me going in the right direction.

The "Linux Language" I'm not sure about, but my Mint6kde had some Internet shortcuts already installed. The first batch is for newbie's and learning the command line (shell);
http://www.linux.org/lessons/
http://www.linuxnewbieguide.org/
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linuxcommand.org ... _shell.php
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

This second set here shows Linux alternatives for Commercial software (Windows).
http://www.osalt.com/
http://www.linuxalt.com/

Best regards, and keep on minting!
Richard

[beth]

Hello again! I know what you mean about that "mount" issue. I kept getting a message that I needed to mount a root. A nifty little menu popped up with lots of choices. Nothing said "root", but then again I don't speak Linux -- yet. So one by one I went down the list until finally it accepted something that mysteriously mounted to "root".

Thank you for the links to Linux education!! Hey, after all this, I want a PhD in something -- Is there a graduate course in Ignorance??

Thanks again for all your help.
Beth

[richyrich]

Nope . . , but I bet in a month or so, you'll be the one helping a newbie!!

regards, Richard

[fearedbliss]

Hello everyone, I'm not exactly new to Linux since I've been keeping track of all the releases since Fedora 5 , Ubuntu 6.06. I've tried various releases since that time frame which I believe was December 2006.

Anyways I've finally decided to jump onto the Linux platform from Windows (Last windows used: Windows 7).

I've formatted and installed Linux as follows:

I have 4 gigs of RAM installed but since it's a 32 bit version of Mint, I can only used 3.2 (Reported in System Monitor).

Linux Swap / 800 MB / Primary Partition
/ / 10 Gig / Primary Partition
/home / 20 Gig / Primary Partition
Unallocated 436.77
Old Windows Partition with my old backed up files / 464.66 / Primary Partition NTFS

The gap between the /home and the NTFS partition was from the old Windows partition scheme I was using. I'm hoping to delete the backed up partition once I set up my linux scheme correctly and safely, and once all the information is moved appropriately.

The problem is I cannot create any more partitions due to me having 4 Primary Partitions already.

Question : How can I create more partitions ? I know you use extended partitions but how should I partition the drive ?

Linux Swap / 800 MB / Primary Partition
/ / 10 Gig / Extended Partition
/home / 20 Gig / Extended Partition
Unallocated 901.43 Gig (After all information is backed up and NTFS part is deleted)

Thanks
- FearedBliss

EDIT:

Ok so I kept on reading and I found Fred's post on Partitions.

I formatted my partition as follows :

/dev/sda1 Extended Partition
...../dev/sda5 Linux Swap 800 MB ( 4 Gig of Physical Ram, x32 system, only 3.2 Gig detected. 4.0 - 3.2 = .8 )
...../dev/sda6 / 12 Gig
...../dev/sda7 /home 20 Gig
Unallocated 899.43 Gig ( 1 TB Western Digital Caviar Green @ 7200 RPM ).

I might need more disk space for other stuff such as Virtual Machines. How would I go about this ? Should I extend the /home directory, or should I make seperate partitions for each ? /home/documents, /home/pictures, /home/vm, etc ?

[uskomaton]

Thanks for this great thread!
I haven't finished reading it all yet since time doesn't permit that right now (gotta get some sleep before work),
so I'm sorry if this has been asked/answered before.

I am switching my media machine from XP to Mint 7 and I have a few questions on partitions since I have 2
large HDDs and don't quite know how to go about partitioning them.
This machine will only be used for music and movies, no need to have any access to Windows or any emulation
stuff, so I plan to use EXT and here lies the rub.


SYSTEM SPECS
RAM: 2GB
HDD 1: 200GB
HDD 2: 500GB

I was thinking the following for partitioning, in this order.

HDD 1
/boot ------- 256MB
/swap ------ 1GB
/ ------------ 12GB
/home ------ ??

HDD2
/swap ------ 1GB
music ~300GB
videos ~200GB

QUESTIONS
1. EXT 3 or 4? I will use EXT2 for /boot.
2. Primary or Logical?
3. What the heck to do to /home, use the rest of HDD1?
4. What to name the partitions on HDD2, /data/Music and /data/Videos and use symlinks to link them to
/home and how would I actually do that? (Never used symlinks and can't seem to find a good guide how to
do that across 2 HDDs)

That is it for now, thanks a bunch if you can answer any of that.


EDIT: NVM I figured it out.

[juv3]

Hi,
Can anyone tell me if I choose to allocate the /home partition on another hard disk that has already contain important data, will I loose it or will it find an empty space in it for the /home folder?
Thanks.

[Chrisoldinho]

Hi all I am getting confused reading all of this. I am a complete newbie so please take that into account - thanks

I have a 160GB HDD
2GB RAM

I have tried to read into the differences between primary and logical drives but for simplicity what would you say is best?

Here is how I plan on installing Mint 7 x64.

2GB swap file - Primary
20GB / - Primary - ext4
138GB /home - Primary - ext4

I presume the above does gives me 20GB for applications etc aka Program Files in Windows and 138GB for eveything else? Given the amount of space I have should I up / to 40GB and reduce /home to 118 to give space for my installation to grow over time?

EDIT

I've done some more reading now and I know what I am going to do. Thanks.

Just 1 question. What is the best setup for the partitions in terms of Logical/Primary.

2GB swap primary
20GB / logical
138GB home/ logical



Thanks, Chris.