(LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

chris_debian · 2009-03-02 14:13:38

Hi,

I'm really starting to like Arch, and am thinking about installing it on my main box, which is an AMD64.

I am using two disks and have one spare, waiting to be formatted. My /home partition is populated and I need to retain this data.

The following illustrates my current partitioning, and I was wondering whether anyone has any good ideas for an Arch install?

My spare HDD would prompt me to think about RAID, but i'm not comfortable with this, due to my lack of knowledge regarding rebuilding, should something fail.

I'd appreciate any advice.

Cheers,

Chris.

-------------------------------------

Current /etc/fstab: 


# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass> 
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0 
# /dev/sdc2 
UUID=19c9d49c-3ba0-4b3b-ab3e-92caece31464 /               ext3    relatime,error 
s=remount-ro 0       1 

# /dev/sda1 
UUID=884c7c84-2102-4833-9422-7fb9b4636ad0 /boot           ext2    relatime      
  0       2 

# /dev/sda2 
UUID=07963f00-36ee-4b03-b8cd-ca286bfb56e6 /home           ext3    relatime      
  0       2 

# /dev/sdc1 
UUID=9268e17f-bba8-487b-8746-33b5e17eb04e none            swap    sw            
  0       0 

/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0

---------------------

df -h: 


Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on 
/dev/sdc2             6.9G  3.4G  3.2G  52% / 
tmpfs                 1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /lib/init/rw 
varrun                1.5G  108K  1.5G   1% /var/run 
varlock               1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /var/lock 
udev                  1.5G  2.9M  1.5G   1% /dev 
tmpfs                 1.5G  576K  1.5G   1% /dev/shm 
lrm                   1.5G  2.4M  1.5G   1% /lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/volatile 
/dev/sda1              89M   38M   46M  45% /boot 
/dev/sda2              76G   60G   12G  85% /home

-------------------------

dmesg looks like this:

scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      Maxtor 6Y080L0   YAR4 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 ... 80Gb        (sda) 
scsi 4:0:1:0: Direct-Access     ATA      Maxtor 6L080L0   BAJ4 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 .... 80 Gb       (sdb- I think) >>>> UNUSED 
scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      SAMSUNG SV0844A  JY10 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 ...8.4 Gb (sdc)

Last edited by chris_debian (2009-03-03 10:29:24)

Inxsible · 2009-03-02 16:06:55

Why don't you simply re-use the partitions that you have? I am assuming that you currently have Debian installed on it.

sdc2 as root, sdc 1 as swap sda1 as boot and make sure that you do NOT format sda2 (which is your home) and mount it as your home during your installation process.

I would make an additional partition for /var - with a reiserfs filesystem.

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-03-02 16:07:20)

chris_debian · 2009-03-02 16:25:50

This was my first idea. I'm wondering whether I should do something with my spare 80gig HDD, or just to move it to another machine. I haven't used reiserfs, I'll have a look at Wiki and see what the advantages are.

Many thanks,

Chris.

Inxsible · 2009-03-02 17:14:18

chris_debian wrote:

This was my first idea. I'm wondering whether I should do something with my spare 80gig HDD, or just to move it to another machine. I haven't used reiserfs, I'll have a look at Wiki and see what the advantages are.
Many thanks,
Chris.

you can use the spare 80 Gs for a shared media drive or something, if you dual boot. If not, it could just be a media drive containing your music and movies. However, if you home drive is big enough, then you can use that drive in some other machine.

reseirfs is better suited for large number of files that are small in size. That's what the /var partition contains.

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-03-02 17:15:22)

chris_debian · 2009-03-02 21:05:08

Thanks for that. I don't dual boot, but could use the drive for something like photos/ music/ movies. Thanks for explaining the ReiserFS thing. Wikipedia was funny. The story about the creator reminded me of the interesting goings on.

Maybe I could use on the 2nd drive. I'd have to work out how to do it, though.

Cheers,

Chris.

Inxsible · 2009-03-02 21:40:31

chris_debian wrote:

Thanks for that. I don't dual boot, but could use the drive for something like photos/ music/ movies. Thanks for explaining the ReiserFS thing. Wikipedia was funny. The story about the creator reminded me of the interesting goings on.
Maybe I could use on the 2nd drive. I'd have to work out how to do it, though.
Cheers,
Chris.

Keep in mind the difference between reiser4 and reiserfs. reiser4 is the newer filesystem and I don't know if htere are bugs. reiserfs is the tried and tested filesystem for partitions such as /var

chris_debian · 2009-03-03 08:24:41

Will do. Time to Google LVM + Arch, now.

chris_debian · 2009-03-03 10:30:40

Had a look at the Arch wiki. Am I right in thinking that I could preserve the data on my home partition, if I did an install using /boot and LVM?

Help appreciated.

Chris.

chris_debian · 2009-03-04 08:20:30

Brainwave- maybe I could use my spare disk to back-up my /home partition on a regular basis, in-case my /home becomes corrupted.

Lux Perpetua · 2009-03-11 05:07:16

chris_debian wrote:

Had a look at the Arch wiki. Am I right in thinking that I could preserve the data on my home partition, if I did an install using /boot and LVM?
Help appreciated.
Chris.

Sure you can. I have /boot on its own partition and everything else on LVM, including a logical volume for /home. I don't recall the procedure I used to retain my existing data; I probably did a full copy/restore. The only downside to LVM I've encountered so far (after several years) is compatibility: not all Linux distributions will install to LVM. Arch doesn't have that problem, though.

chris_debian · 2009-03-11 14:40:32

That sounds encouraging.

Many thanks.

Chris.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-03-02 14:13:38

(LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

#2 2009-03-02 16:06:55

Re: (LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

#3 2009-03-02 16:25:50

Re: (LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

#4 2009-03-02 17:14:18

Re: (LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

#5 2009-03-02 21:05:08

Re: (LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

#6 2009-03-02 21:40:31

Re: (LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

#7 2009-03-03 08:24:41

Re: (LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

#8 2009-03-03 10:30:40

Re: (LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

#9 2009-03-04 08:20:30

Re: (LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

#10 2009-03-11 05:07:16

Re: (LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

#11 2009-03-11 14:40:32

Re: (LVM?) Partitioning advice including the preservation of /home.

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