Considerations before you install

Quick to answer questions about finding your way around Linux Mint as a new user.
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Prescottech

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by Prescottech »

Hello, I am new here.

Have you ever sat back and thought about the old days of Unix? How long it took to get one system set up and configured? The last Linux install I did took about 10 minutes on a new system. I am blown away at the progress that has been made in the past years.
martian46

Trying to make swap partition on 2nd drive work.

Post by martian46 »

I created a swap partition with Gparted on a second hard drive but my system doesn't see it. System Monitor still shows the original 1.5 GB the install made on primary drive. Second drive is formatted same as first (ext4) bootable, with last GB formatted as Extended/Linux-Swap, same as other drive. Machine was restarted & no change. The article makes it sound like it will be recognized by the system. I'm sure there is another step involved, if not, what did I do wrong? I got the drive out of an old work station machine going to the trash. I installed it as a slave & all is well till I read this neat little trick about increasing performance.

After reading many posts about partitioning, none of which tell how to create a swap partition on another drive, I'm beginning to think this is a step that was to be done before install. I'm sure there has to be a way to do it post-install. It's an empty drive, very small (10 GB) & freshly formatted as above. Does anyone know how to make Julia see it & grab the GBs? This PC only has a half gig of memory (old, slow, P3 800Mhz, 133 memory) made from used parts (my Frankenstein as it may be). It runs surprisingly well with Julia for just goofing around on, & the 2nd drive swap partition idea sounds like a good free upgrade for this dinosaur. Because of the 8ooMhz processor speed will this even make a noticeable difference? If I'm wasting my time I can just get the space back, not worth reinstalling all for this machine, but would like to know how for future reference.

Thanx to anyone who can help!
vincent

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by vincent »

You need to edit /etc/fstab for your new swap partition to be recognized by your system; this goes for any partition you add post-install and would like to have it recognized by Linux.
NeptuneTech

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by NeptuneTech »

Hi....i went through couple of pages of this thread....and read the final one....sorry if my problem has been solved earlier, but i skipped 10 pages.....

well, i just installed Linux Julia, (im using linix first time) and side by side i have windows 7 installed on it....my laptop has 320 gb harddisk, 2gb ram, out of which i have partitioned 4 drives(windows uses 3 ) and only 80 gb is seperated for LINUX......i knew that swap memory mustn't exceed more than 4 gig........but the way i installed this LINUX was somehow like this: 40 gb as swap(maybe mounted as / ) and rest 40 gb mounted as /usr/local.....i know this was a blunder made by me, and i just realised it now....
so without again re-installing LINUX, can i correct my serious mistake??? is there any way(except re-installing linux) that i can re allocate the hard disk??? im planning to make it like |2gb swap|10 gb / with ext4| 68gb as /home as ext4| how would that be???? please do send your valuable suggestions...
Silent Warrior
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Re: Considerations before you install

Post by Silent Warrior »

You should boot from the LiveCD and use GParted (or whatever other partition editor you have access to). There should be plenty of guides on how exactly this is done, I'm sure you'll find them in a heartbeat, so I won't repeat any of them.
icyubok

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by icyubok »

After reading this post and replies, all I can say is that I must be a super newbie. :oops:
I installed Linux Mint and don't know if I made any partitions at all. :?:
How do I check my partitions?
Should I reinstall LM?
Is this even the right place to start asking questions?
Where do I start as a new Linux user?
ninja1

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by ninja1 »

Well icyubok I am a super-noob too. I installed Linux Mint 10 Julia on a P4 machine with 1GB of RAM on a 20GB hdd set up as single partition. My data is on an external HDD wich is shared (by swapping USB cable) with a Windows box. Is all that partitioning stuff related to security, or performance, or what? So far, my setup is working just fine for me. For a newbie, what's to be gained by futzing around with partitions? For an extremely modest machine, what's to be gained by futzing around with partitions? My plan is to stick with cheap small-capacity HDD for Linux OS and apps, and a 2nd larger hdd or external hdd for data. That way, the smaller hdd can be easily wiped or swapped if I want to play with other distros, and the data hdd's remain undisturbed.
Silent Warrior
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Re: Considerations before you install

Post by Silent Warrior »

ninja1: You know you can achieve precisely that using partitions, right? Well, if you're going to use different drives, it'll be much simpler to designate the larger drive as its own partition, makes perfect sense.
The reason(s) for having a multitude of partitions can both be performance - I think the Arch-crew recommends a 128 Mb partition using EXT2 for /boot for maximum boot-performance - and to simplify distribution changes or upgrades. If you keep your /home (or, hell, even /usr/share/wallpapers, or whatever) as a separate partition, you won't automatically format them along with the system-files. (Of course, you need to be observant and examine disk-usage a fair bit to set up a partition-scheme that's as efficient as it can be.)
hyoumoku

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by hyoumoku »

I've been wondering - the starting post says to use ext3 - is there a difference if you use ext4 instead?
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Re: Considerations before you install

Post by Silent Warrior »

I doubt it. It's a newer filesystem; not as proven, perhaps, but it hasn't caused me any problems yet. It's possible the first post is older than the inclusion of support for Ext4. Feel free to use either, as well as looking up information on the filesystems to make your own opinion.
lewis.michel

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by lewis.michel »

what is ext3 and 4?
gabranth

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by gabranth »

this is what ive got all on separate partitions so i don't have to sfill one big / partition

/boot 128mb sda5 jfs
/ 12gb sdd5 jfs
/usr 26gb sdc5 jfs
/var 26gb sdd6 jfs
/home 97gb sdd7 jfs
/tmp 4gb sdd8 jfs
/swap 12gb sda6
Spark

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by Spark »

Hello i'm new to linux, so here is the question (sorry for my English).
3) Swap partitions don't need to be any larger than 2X your system ram. And, the sum of system ram and swap shouldn't exceed 4 Gig. If it does, reduce the swap partition size to get back to 4 Gig. or less. If you have 4 Gig. of ram on a 32 bit system like Mint, make a very small swap partition anyway, as the kernel expects to have a swap partition available. Not having a swap partition slows the kernel down in certain situations. For this purpose, there is no need for the swap partition to be over 256 KB at most.
Is it the kernel now still needs those swap? I just have a single hard drive, mint installed with swap partition include with the same values of my ram. I check out the system monitor resources, there is no activity from this swap, so i think why don't i just remove this partition to save some spaces. So, is it still necessary to do the tiny swap partition part in the same hard drive, Do this still affected the kernel nowadays?
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tdockery97
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Re: Considerations before you install

Post by tdockery97 »

The swap is not influenced by the kernel. Swap on one hand is a holdover from the days when computers had a small amount of random access memory. On the other hand, if you wish to hibernate your computer instead of turning it off, swap is necessary to hold the work you were doing in your last session. If you have lots of RAM and don't plan on using suspend/hibernate then it's up to you whether to keep or remove the swap partition.
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Spark

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by Spark »

tdockery97 wrote:The swap is not influenced by the kernel. Swap on one hand is a holdover from the days when computers had a small amount of random access memory. On the other hand, if you wish to hibernate your computer instead of turning it off, swap is necessary to hold the work you were doing in your last session. If you have lots of RAM and don't plan on using suspend/hibernate then it's up to you whether to keep or remove the swap partition.
Thank you for the reply.
That's why i quoted the first post that mention about the kernel stuff. Oh i don't really bothered with this, i rarely choose the suspend mode, (unlike Windows), here in linux i got brand new speed of booting & shutting down time :).
May i ask one question sir, is it still recommended to have swap partition on the same drive?
thatsallurspaceships

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by thatsallurspaceships »

Very good tutorial, Fred. Thanks alot. With this tutorial you know how to install Linux properly. Not like me who accidently installed it properly. :lol:
Habitual

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by Habitual »

If it wasn't for this "Fred Thread" I never would have installed LM using a dedicated /home as early as I did.

It oughta be a STICKY. :P
A Future Pilot

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by A Future Pilot »

So I have two questions...

First...I saw several times he said you could expand partitions with unallocated space...Is that right?
Say you have:

swap 1GB
/ 15GB
/home 30GB
Unallocated

Could you make / 30GB without losing any data or anything? And how would you do that? Using something like GParted?

And my second question...I know Linux Mint now has a 64 bit version...how much RAM+swap is supported in that? Do you still want a swap the same size as your RAM? Also...what is the support for 64bit like? Are there any programs that work in x86 that don't work in x64?

Thanks!!
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tdockery97
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Re: Considerations before you install

Post by tdockery97 »

A Future Pilot wrote:So I have two questions...

First...I saw several times he said you could expand partitions with unallocated space...Is that right?
Say you have:

swap 1GB
/ 15GB
/home 30GB
Unallocated

Could you make / 30GB without losing any data or anything? And how would you do that? Using something like GParted?
The easiest way is with GParted. As long as the unallocated space is to the right of your /home partition, you can just right-click on your /home partition and select "resize", then just grab the right side of the partition illustration and drag it to fill the unallocated space. Then just hit OK/Done, and click "Apply" up on the GParted toolbar.
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A Future Pilot

Re: Considerations before you install

Post by A Future Pilot »

Thank you very much! I didn't know that was possible!!!

Also one other question...how does ext4 do in case of power outs and such? Everything I've read about it seems to say it's better EXCEPT I heard that it wasn't quite as stable with improper shutdowns...is that true?
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