Archlinux on Eeepc 901 - SSD Partition Advice

myrlin · 2010-08-10 10:54:57

I am very new to Archlinux, but have been using openSuSE on my desktop for a number of years. As an experiment, I installed Arch on Virtualbox, and was impressed, so I now want to do a "proper" installation on my EeePC 901.

I would be very grateful for advice on the optimum SSD partitioning scheme for the 901. I have done much "Googling", but have not been able to find a solution.

The 901 has two SSD's, a built-in 4GB (identified by Arch's install program as /dev/sda), and 16GB flash (/dev/sdb).

I apologise if this is a trivial question, or one that has been answered elsewhere, but I really need some advice in order to be able to move forward.

Many thanks in advance

karol · 2010-08-10 11:06:41

That all depends on what you do and how you do it. I'd suggest that 4 GB as / and the 16 GB for home, *but* 4 GB is not much and you may run out of space. If you plan installing many apps, use the 16 GB as / and keep your /home somewhere else.

skanky · 2010-08-10 11:08:03

This probably isn't the best one, but I have:

sda1 -> /boot
sda2 -> /
sdb1 -> /usr

/home is a link to /usr/home

No swap.

Can't remember where I got it from. The installed apps and home stuff is then mainly on the 16GB drive.

karol · 2010-08-10 11:11:52

skanky wrote:

This probably isn't the best one, but I have:
sda1 -> /boot
sda2 -> /
sdb1 -> /usr
/home is a link to /usr/home
No swap.
Can't remember where I got it from. The installed apps and home stuff is then mainly on the 16GB drive.

It's a good compromise, but you still keep /var on the 4 GB drive, so you have keep an eye on the /var/cache.

skanky · 2010-08-10 11:59:49

karol wrote:

skanky wrote:
This probably isn't the best one, but I have:
sda1 -> /boot
sda2 -> /
sdb1 -> /usr
/home is a link to /usr/home
No swap.
Can't remember where I got it from. The installed apps and home stuff is then mainly on the 16GB drive.
It's a good compromise, but you still keep /var on the 4 GB drive, so you have keep an eye on the /var/cache.

Yes, that's a good point. When I set it up it was my first Arch install (I think...there may have been one short-lived one on another machine first), and it hadn't occurred to me that that may get that big. It's currently at about 1.9GB so the whole / is still under 3GB. I'm in two minds whether it's fine, or I should have done something similar to home or I should have given it its own partition. As it's not yet caused an issue, I'm cautiously erring on the side of what's there is good enough. I might look into setting up a warning if / or /var or /var/cache gets over a certain size.

There's a few 901 users on here, I think the general 901 thread (should be findable using search) may have a few partition schemes.

karol · 2010-08-10 12:01:21

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=53464

skanky · 2010-08-10 12:23:24

karol wrote:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=53464

You're less lazy than me.
Okay, so I was shamed into checking it and found a grand total of no partition set-ups in that thread - though I can't vouch for having done an especially thorough search.

Rumor · 2010-08-10 12:25:12

I have a 901 as well. I tend to partition it as others have mentioned:

4 GB SSD
256 MB for /boot
Rest for /home

16 GB SSD
2 gigs for swap - which I know is overkill
6-8 gigs for /
rest for /files - which is owned by my user and is a general holding area for anything that will not fit in /home

karol · 2010-08-10 12:31:04

I have a rather light setup and use 4 out of 7 GB of /, out of which 1 GB is /var/cache.
I think a 7 GB / is a safer choice, even though the partition setup looks a bit clunky.

aetherfly · 2010-08-10 14:25:05

I also have a failry light setup. I'm running KDE, but only with a few of the KDE packages that I actually wanted. I partitioned '/' '/tmp' '/var' and '/usr' seperately, I also only use a 512MB swap (I only have 1GB RAM total and only touch a small amount of swap under load).
Here's my usage per partition:

Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1012M  337M  624M  36% /
31M   15M   15M  52% /boot
2.0G   36M  1.9G   2% /tmp
3.0G  1.2G  1.6G  43% /var
5.9G  2.8G  2.9G  50% /usr
80G   39G   37G  52% /home

I've installed Arch several times and this is my most refined partitioning scheme thus far. So, I would sugguest having /boot / and /tmp or /var on your 4GB and the others on the rest? I'm no expert, but my point being that you don't have limit yourself to /boot / and /home, you can break up the / partition. You can also make swap a file rather than a partition, if I'm not mistaken. All options to consider. Hope this helps.

jasonwryan · 2010-08-10 18:31:46

I went for a very standard setup (may even have been straight from the wiki):
sda - /
sdb - /home

...and I added a 16GB flash card as sdc which I use for /music

I've had no problems with space - every once in a while I backup to whole thing to an external drive and pacman -Scc

Mind you, I run a reasonably light setup. I'm currently only using 60% of /

myrlin · 2010-08-11 08:57:53

First, I would like to say "thank you" to everyone who has responded so quickly to my question. I am new to arch, and this forum, and am overwhelmed by how helpful and friendly everyone has been. THANK YOU.

I am planning a light setup, and want to keep things simple. My main objective is to minimise write cycles (and hence wear) on the built-in 3Gb SSD (sda). I like Skanky's scheme, and it got me thinking of a variation. This is where I really show my ignorance! Would the following work?

sda1 - /boot
sda2 - /
No swap, ext2

Then, move the files /usr, /home, /var, /tmp to sdb1 (formatted as ext3) and replace them on sda2 with symlinks to the actual files on sdb1.

I would be very grateful for any comments on this idea, even if they're less than complimentary.

Thanks again to everyone for all your help

skanky · 2010-08-11 20:30:17

AFAIA there would be no issues with that - but I'd defer to anyone who does come up with one as I've not tried all those dirs linked.
My 901 is elsewhere atm but I'll double check a few details (fs type, link type, etc.) tomorrow, if I remember.

One thing I will recommend though is make a detailed note of what you set-up. If the system works, and you're like me, you'll completely forget that you did it this way by this time next year.

skanky · 2010-08-12 08:20:01

skanky wrote:

AFAIA there would be no issues with that - but I'd defer to anyone who does come up with one as I've not tried all those dirs linked.
My 901 is elsewhere atm but I'll double check a few details (fs type, link type, etc.) tomorrow, if I remember.
One thing I will recommend though is make a detailed note of what you set-up. If the system works, and you're like me, you'll completely forget that you did it this way by this time next year.

Right, I am using ext3 & ext4 on my partitions, and the link is a symlink.

myrlin · 2010-08-12 08:42:48

Many thanks, Skanky. I'll give it a go and see what happens.

BTW, you're very lucky. I'll forget what I've done by this time next WEEK! I put it down to old age!!

skanky · 2010-08-12 08:44:25

myrlin wrote:

Many thanks, Skanky. I'll give it a go and see what happens.
BTW, you're very lucky. I'll forget what I've done by this time next WEEK! I put it down to old age!!

Oh, I may have forgotten by about a week, but I only looked again when you posted this thread.

myrlin · 2010-08-15 10:09:46

Phew! That's a relief!!

I'm in the middle of doing the installation. I'll report back when I've finished.

Thanks again, everyone.

skanky · 2010-08-15 12:05:46

Good luck.

myrlin · 2010-08-20 11:23:00

As promised, here is an update.

My objectives were (1) to maximize the life of the built-in (4Gb) SSD by reducing the number of write cycles, and (2) to maximize the available space and performance of the 16Gb SSD.

I did the following:
(1) Created a /boot and a / partition on 4Gb SSD, and installed to that. I formatted both SSD's as ext4 filesystems.
(2) Moved /home, /usr, /var, /tmp to the 16Gb SSD, and replaced them with symlinks on the 4Gb SSD. I know the usual method is to create separate partitions for these on the 16Gb, but that meant that there would be chunks of space that I couldn't use in the part-used partitions, so I thought it would be better to use a single partition with these directories installed as files.
(3) using information from this post I turned off journaling to the partitions on the 4gb SSD with:

 tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sdax

and tuned the performance of the 16Gb SSD (/dev/sdb1) with:

in fstab:

 noatime,journal_async_commit,data=writeback,barrier=0,nobh,commit=60,errors=remount-ro

in menu.lst:

 rootflags=data=writeback,commit=60,nobh,barrier=0,journal_async_commit

So far, everything seems to be working well although I would welcome any comments from those whose knowledge is much greater than mine.

Last edited by myrlin (2010-10-01 15:31:57)

killerturtle · 2010-11-21 10:27:33

May i ask what windowmanager / DE you're currently using?

Greetz
Sven

myrlin · 2010-11-21 15:53:33

I am using the excellent KDEMod3 Rebuild by Elvaka (see this post) https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=97612&p=1 and its variant of kdm (kdm3) as my windows manager. Hope this helps.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-08-10 10:54:57

Archlinux on Eeepc 901 - SSD Partition Advice

#2 2010-08-10 11:06:41

Re: Archlinux on Eeepc 901 - SSD Partition Advice

#3 2010-08-10 11:08:03

Re: Archlinux on Eeepc 901 - SSD Partition Advice

#4 2010-08-10 11:11:52

Re: Archlinux on Eeepc 901 - SSD Partition Advice

#5 2010-08-10 11:59:49

Re: Archlinux on Eeepc 901 - SSD Partition Advice

#6 2010-08-10 12:01:21

Re: Archlinux on Eeepc 901 - SSD Partition Advice

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#10 2010-08-10 14:25:05

Re: Archlinux on Eeepc 901 - SSD Partition Advice

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Re: Archlinux on Eeepc 901 - SSD Partition Advice

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Re: Archlinux on Eeepc 901 - SSD Partition Advice

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